A New Kind of Chip

There was a trend a while back where mother's (it's always mothers, because father's are given a plaque and retirement watch for spending more than 10 minutes with their spawn) were told to mask and bury vegetables inside foods.

As a person who can pick out that one stray piece of coconut, find pineapple juice in a sea of other juices and don't even bother trying to sneak a stray baked bean past me I was appalled. No one would believe me that no I have not simply never had a good piece of coconut or pot of beans I hate everything about it and if you try to sneak a bit past me and watch to see if I'll like it you're going to get a wad of half eaten goo handed back to you.

I also wonder about these children that have no idea they're eating "magical, make you perfect" vegetables. If you really grow up being lied to by your parents for years about what is and isn't food what happens when you move away and have to cook for yourself. Those "mashed potatoes" made from real potatoes are going to taste a lot better than pureed cauliflower (which is an abomination, make up your mind are you broccoli or some sort of non flavored spirit of a vegetable here to inflict pain upon the world).

Instead of opening them to the world of vegetables at a younger age so they could develop a taste and love of them you hid them away like a dirty secret treating them as something to be feared and ashamed of. As any God fearing housewife knows, you only save that tactic for sex and eating chocolate, duh.

This little diatribe is getting to a point, a point about chips. But not chips made from what pseudo-nutrition has declared nothing better than chewing on Styrofoam the potato, but that sweeter tastier cousin the yam (or sweet potato if you want to get technicalish).

A local BBQ joint that's really only good for one thing makes these delectable homemade sweet potato chips you can't help but gobble up by the boatload (I bet you guessed what their one good thing is, yes their Caesar salad made with a bulb of garlic so you can shoot flaming anti-vampire spray from your mouth after).

For a long time my husband and I kept talking about how we should try to make them at home. Wouldn't it be a great idea, blah blah blah. Then I'd usually forget at the grocery store as I hunted for whatever was on sale to create meals for the week.

But that all changed (obvioulsy or this would be a short and pointless post -- well more pointless) last week when I snagged up two yams/sweet potatoes/alien pods.

We don't have a mandolin so I did the second best (maybe third if you have a home guillotine) and used my vegetable peeler to slice of thin pieces of the two yams, collected those and tossed them into hot oil for about 5 minutes or so.

You don't want to let them turn brown just a more translucent less orangey hue. They'll continue to cook and crisp up a bit on the drying rack. But be careful you'll be so tempted to taste a few as they're cooling there is a high chance to tongue burnage plan accordingly.

Are these better for you than regular old potato chips? I have no idea, I rather doubt it but as we declared war on the potato and the corn cob and labeled them anti-vegetable I guess one must make due with what one is allowed to have by Food Big Brother.

But these are some of the most addictive tasty chips I've ever had. The slight sweetness really rings through so I personally don't feel like they need a bit of salt added. Just a crunch and a lingering hint of sugar on the tongue.

I made up both of the yams thinking we'd have some leftover I could bag up but before we knew it the entire bowl was empty (well not entirely before we knew, the slowly lowering level was a bit of a hint).

What is the moral of this post? That hiding veggies from your kids is lying and could mess them up really bad down the road? That randomly declaring a food worse than Hitler is overkill? Or that making sweet potato chips at home with just a vegetable peeler and a drying rack is incredibly tasty and I heartily recommend it?

Yeah let's go with the last one, I've got yams to peel. *crunch crunch crunch*