The 6th Food Group

My apologies in advance for a rather meaningless post about potato chips. Bygones : )

I looked at my bag of chips yesterday and found that the list of ingredients read as follows: cut potatoes, palm oil, lemon, salt, and cumin. Oh my wonderful. My first bag of chips without hydrogenated fats, random chemicals I can't pronounce and who knows what else mixed in. Or maybe these Arabic food companies are just lying to me. All I know is, they are fantastic at making fried potato products from scratch. I've lost count of the number of times I've seen french fries bubbling in a huge pot of oil on the stove. They have a strange affinity for creating sandwiches out of french fries (literally french fries and maybe some scraps of lettuce and tomato in a pita) and they can add a bag of potato chips to any meal, especially breakfast. It's not uncommon to see a table spread with bowls of mixed eggs, a plate of white cheese, some chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, and a large, silver lined bag of chips ripped down the middle and set among the plates for general consumption. At first, I thought this incredibly odd. Now, since potato chips are one of my favorite food groups, I find myself grateful for a culture that eats them with almost anything. My favorite flavor is Seasoned Cheese, but I won't turn down Tomato or Chili & Lemon. The Kabob flavored ones still make me pause as I can't wrap my head around chips that taste like meat, but if I'm in a bind and hungry, as I recently was on my 9 hour bus trip back from the South Sinai coast, I may end up finishing a bag of Sish Tawook flavor despite myself. YUM.