All the Chips I've Ever Eaten.

Of all the foods I’ve eaten in my life, the chip is the only one which provides me with solid memories. There are other foods I have all the time, things like apples or bananas, but I couldn’t write a list of memorable bananas. There is something special about the chip. It is an illicit, unhealthy, pleasurable food, that comes in so many different forms. I hope to work on this list until I’ve recounted every single possible chip memory. I’ve included both hot chips and crisps, and both specific and general memories, in order to comprehensively honour the glory of the deep fried potato strip.

1. My grandmother made crinkle cut chips to accompany the fried fish we ate as one of our staple meals. They were cut with a curious tool that was a rippled piece of metal with a sharp edge and a handle. The uncooked chips were placed in a wire basket and plunged into a saucepan of hot oil. The oil was then carefully stored in an enamel pot for next time. When my mother was clearing out my grandmother’s kitchen I noticed the wire basket in a pile of things to be thrown away. It was a melancholy and reflective moment.
2. The chips I eat that I know are cooked in beef tallow, but am too greedy/drunk/hungry to care.
3. McDonalds fries dunked in sundaes. The amazing thing about McDonalds foods is that they can all be combined, no matter what they are. Dunk a chicken nugget in thick shake, I’m sure it will be surprisingly nice.
4. Chain store fries in cardboard containers. I love to deconstruct and flatten them, feeling like I have unlocked a packaging secret.
5. Home-mades with paprika. Chips need paprika like sneakers need laces.
6. Chips wrapped in butcher’s paper. The package gets limp from heat, and some people rip the whole thing open, whilst others tear the end and pick them out. Always having used the first method, I was amazed the first time I saw someone using the latter technique.
7. Stanmore chips. Tim’s longstanding favourite, although they were greasy and grizzly. Inevitably we’d crave these on Sundays, the only day the shop was closed.
8. Chips on the beach. This is often a major motivating factor in getting me on the long bus ride to the beach. I’ve eaten chips at the beach more than I have swum at the beach.
9. Chips in a sandwich. Both hot chips and crisps, with margarine and tomato sauce. Make sure to drink something in between bites, otherwise it may cease to be possible to breathe.
10. Crisps in giant bags at teenage-girl parties. I have one particular school friend who I associate with these gigantic foil pillows, when I picture her now, I inevitably see a giant bag of chips as well. There seems so many chips in these bags, like they will never end.
11. Miniature packets of crisps. This was the only exciting food I was ever given for school. I’d feel proud of my miniature packets, and also afraid too many people would want some of them.
12. Crisps with rice at the Courthouse Hotel, the day Tim was told to wake up. We had been drinking all afternoon, and somehow both a bowl of rice and a bag of salt and vinegar crisps appeared on the table, and we thought it would be a good idea to crush the crisps and add them to the rice, stir and eat. It was delicious! We repeated this combination sober a few days later and it was repulsive.
13. Chips from the side of someone else’s plate, trying not to take too many. Painful when I have no money and I don’t feel comfortable asking my companions to buy me my own chips.
14. Chips eaten from someone else’s discards at a food court or restaurant.
15. Chips bought with Clinton and Helen and eaten in various suburban parks. White bread, tomato sauce, and the psychology of chip-eating.
16. Cold hot chips. Going back for seconds after the package has cooled down. The cold chip is squeaky in the mouth and unpleasant. Hot chips are nothing without their heat.
17. My mother tried to explain homosexuality to me after we bought chips from a shop on Tambourine Mountain, Queensland, during a family holiday. The men were very nice, one was wearing a frilly apron, I didn’t really understand what my mother was saying about them.
18. Chips bought to get change. I refuse to buy gum, I have no use for gum. One particular bag of change chips I bought so I could use a locker at the state library. I bought it from a sandwich shop on a city street. The store was very thin and cluttered, and full of office workers buying their lunch.
19. Chips that come in red cardboard boxes with "good food" printed on it. I always wonder in what sense they mean good.
20. Chips in those cardboard cups that have newsprint on them. Rather than selections from newspapers, the text extols the glory of hot chips, and the ends of the sentences are always cut off. Every time I’d get one I’d hope they had changed the design so it had real news stories, or National Enquirer type stories.
21. Crisps bought during the 1997 Goosebumps card showdown, where I was racing Vic to get the full set. The competition inspired crazy behaviour - someone would go across the road to the service station, buy ten packets of chips, take out the cards and leave the chips for the guy who worked there. In the end, we both obtained full sets at the same time by swapping, and neither of us ate chips again for a while.
22. Chips bought because I smell hot chips, either because someone is eating them close by, or I am standing near a chip shop. The smell of chips when fresh is delicious, however the smell of chips when it lingers in a confined space like a car begins to resemble unwashed trousers.
23. We drove all around the beachside suburbs looking for chips on New Year’s Eve in 2002, and the only ones we could find were shoestring chips, skinnier even than McDonald’s fries. We were disappointed. I remember driving past a large house with tables and chairs set out in the grounds for a banquet later that evening. The van we were driving leaked exhaust and I had to keep my head out the window like a dog in order to breathe. We ate chips, salad and drank cola, and fell asleep before midnight.