Sunday, June 8, 2008

Mayo Chips

A. and I were shooting the shit the other day as we were munching on a bag of ketchup chips. We talked about how many chip flavours were based on condiments. Ketchup, salt-and-vinegar, honey mustard/dijon, black pepper, even Worcestershire-flavoured crisps in Britain and wasabi in Asian countries. So why isn't there a mayo chip? Many European folks enjoy dipping their fries into mayo, and apparently in Russia, mayo is more popular than ketchup. They even have different flavours of mayo. Mayo! So why hasn't there been an egg-y mayonnaise-flavoured chip yet?

I speculated with another friend, Kai, who wondered whether there was such a thing as mayo powder. I guess that's important in the chip-flavouring world. You've got be able to coat those thin potato roasties in some kind of powder, keeping them crisp instead of pouring some thick mixture of them. But if they can create ketchup powder to go on chips, why not mayo? This led to further speculation on whether mayo chips would even be that good. The taste of mayo is kind of subtle, so maybe as a chip flavour, it would be sort of bland. If there ever was a chip flavour, its catch phrase should be, "Heyo, it's Mayo! Chips"

Yesterday I went to an island near the city to help with a beach clean up. McNabs Island always had some mysterious allure about it. There's access to it if you rent/have a boat or if you go with a boating company, but I guess for whatever reason, not many people think of going there other than staring at it dreamily from Point Pleasant Park.

The island is pretty cool. There's some camping and people do come by to have picnics and such, but for the most part, it hasn't been too overrun by businesses. People used to have cottages there, but there are no shops or cafes or much phone reception for that matter.

The clean up was not what I had anticipated. On the boat ride over, I expected there to be lots of hippies and hardcore environmentalists. Instead there was a multitude of different kinds of people including couples, corporate folks, a few families and even some hipsters. Now, I'll admit, I'm not hardcore. I sometimes don't even compost, but I had dreams about conversing with others about how there were so many tampon applicators littered the beach. That didn't happen. Instead I talked to people about their fish oil selling business or teaching in China. Important things and interesting things to chit chat about, but not at all what I expected.

Then at the end of the outing, when we all piled onto the boat, after spending hours picking up trash and plastics, people rushed to the bar to buy drinks in plastic cups. What?! I don't get it. I'm now convinced plastic is evil after seeing it floating around the water and washed up onto the beaches. That shit doesn't decompose for years if at all. I guess people weren't throwing the cups overboard, but still. We spent our Saturday afternoon picking up waste only to add to it at the end of the day?! There's some pretty interesting things you can find. Aside from the gazillion tampon applicators, lobster traps, bottles and rope, I found a key and a duck decoy.

The weather was excellent though, and despite my smugness of never burning, I burned. Sort of. I guess browned would be a more accurate description. Like all that garbage that had time to brown on the beach.

1 comment:

Stina said...

i'm not the biggest mayo fan but it's definitely an interesting idea. i wonder what new flavours they'll come up with in the future.