We meet again, tallow: Sea Salt & Vinegar Kettle Style Potato Chips from Fat of the Land

Last week I made a quick mid-day run to Jenifer Street Market and saw these near the hot food display.

This was, in fact, the last bag of the salt & vinegar variety sitting near the steam trays that were keeping hotel pans of burnt ends and tater tot casserole at just the right temperature to keep the health inspector away. A cursory glance at the shelves as I walked through the junk food aisle revealed no further bags of this stuff but it was, after all, only a cursory glance.

It seems that chips fried in tallow is a trend, of sorts, as this is the third brand I've seen around town and, while I have not scoured the city for chips kissed with tallow goodness, I would presume there are others yet unknown to me to be had.

Fat of the Land is an Indianapolis company (see you in 2 months, Indy). Their website is pretty basic, which is not inherently bad, I suppose. It's one where their chips don't have pages dedicated to them explaining ingredients, cooking methods, and whatnot; they only have pages dedicated to buying them in bulk. And so the lone page I can find for these salt & vinegar chips offers little more than the ability to buy a 12-pack for $85.

Perhaps the company is working on a shoestring budget and is keeping things on the utilitarian side and so we don't get any ad copy about the wonderful tanginess to be had as they explode like a supernova on your tongue. Nor do we see the ingredients list which disappointingly features no vinegar powder nor any acetic acid. Instead the bag lists only citric and malic acids.

When I found this bag, I wondered when the anti-seed oil movement started. I wouldn't be at all surprised if it dates back to the late 1960s and has patiently bided its time in the (pot) smoke-filled backrooms of places like the Willy Street Co-op waiting for its chance to hit the mainstream. It only came into my consciousness last year when RFK was railing against them and they seemed to become moderately unfashionable, like gym shoes with velcro instead of laces.

I did a modicum (or less) of research into this and it seems that seed oils are not, in fact, pressed by Lucifer himself in Hell, contra RFK leading me to believe that making fats, whatever their source, a minor part of your diet is probably best.

I appreciated that the edges of these chips had retained the skin of the potato. The rest of the spud slices were light yellow and the perimeter of brown on each just somehow seemed to achieve a Golden Mean effect. Not all dark, not all brilliant. OK, a food aesthete I am not. In addition to being light yellow, the broad surfaces of these babies were riddle with bubbles. They were also sliced more thickly than your normal chip.

I stuck my nose in the bag and took a whiff several times and found that tallow was the most prominent smell but it wasn't particularly pungent unlike with the other brands of tallow-fried chips I've had. I could barely smell any spud and was not able to discern any tang-inducing acids whatsoever.

Tasting started well with a big crunch as I put a couple into my maw. They had a very nice earthy potato flavor and I found that a little extra salt had been applied. The tallow taste was very mellow and I was disappointed to find that there were only homeopathic levels of acidity to be had. Tanginess was more a vague sensation than a taste.

In almost every review of salt & vinegar snacks I have done, I make a quip about them needing more vinegar, more sourness. Rarely, if ever, has that sentiment been more true than here. It was bad enough that there was no vinegar used in making these "salt & vinegar" chips, but it seems they barely applied any citric or malic acid in its place.

These chips taste good and had a very fine balance of tallow and spud. However, I found that, in order to taste anything remotely tangy, I had to put a few into my mouth at once, chew them well, and move that glob of potato paste around my tongue to find that, uh, sweet spot, where I could taste sour.

See you in July, Indy. Now I need to find a place for a Hoosier sandwich.

From the Gourmands of the Tarheel State: Apple Cider & Balsamic Vinegar from The Gourmet Chip Company

It had been a fairly quiet spring on the salt & vinegar snack front until I stopped in at The Coffee Grounds up in Eau Claire earlier this month and found these.

I'd never heard of this The Gourmet Chip Company and was mildly disappointed that they are in North Carolina and not a local Eau Claire product. Someone tell Justin Vernon to invest in a potato chip company, stat! Still, they make a chip with salt & two kinds of vinegar so I'll let their choice of location slide. This time.

I looked at the TGCC site and, upon seeing the word "smoked", my salivary gland kicked into overdrive. They have Smoked Hops & Cheddar chips on offer. Color me intrigued. I don't recall seeing them up north but will be keeping my eyes peeled on my next visit.

The Ashevillan chip at hand, though, is TGCC's Apple Cider and Balsamic Vinegar Thick Cut Potato Chips. The bag says "ALL SPICES ARE GROUND & BLENDED in-house" which seemed a bit anti-climactic since we're talking salt and a couple vinegar powders. I presume that they're not actually concocting their own vinegar powders. The back of the bag invites the eater to imagine themselves at an Irish pub with a big plate of fried potatoes laced with vinegar.

Not a bad invocation of a far-off, exotic land. Fully 50% of the salt & vinegar chips I sampled from Ireland used the apple cider stuff. So how did the Tarheels do?

They weren't lying when they advertised these things as being thick(ly) cut. They appeared well fried as they had a dark yellow hue with surfaces laced with bubbles all over. As you can see, some of these bubbles were fairly large and even popped. There were some brown bits but the chips were, overall, of a yellow color. The aroma in the bag was mainly of roasty spuds and brought back childhood memories of my father making Bratkartoffeln to go along with his pork roast. The potatoes had a mostly earthy smell. A bit of vinegar and a dash of oil rounded out the olfactory part of my sampling.

Digging into my sample mini-platter, I found that the chips had a big, soggy crunch to them. Being thick(ly) cut, there's more potato matter to soak up the oil and, presumably, they are fried longer than your average chip. Although I detected no extra salt, they had a lovely fried potato flavor that was truly more like the stuff my dad used to fry up in a pan than a chip from a bag. At first the spuds tasted on the earthy side but took on sweetness after chewing a bit. The vinegar flavor was on the mild side but nonetheless it had a great taste with the balsamic in front.

As with most salt & vinegar chips, these could have used a more liberal application of vinegar. Still, they were excellent and stand apart from all the other brands I've had as they have a real Bratkartoffeln thing going.

Carry the beautiful with you

When I awoke the next morning, my ears weren't ringing too much from the Stick Men show and my ladyfriend was next to me in bed. Truth be told, I am still getting used to waking up next to another human being as I'd lost that pleasure with my wife a few years back. But at least I had Piper - until just shy of a couple months ago - a friendly face first thing in the morning. Going to bed and waking up alone is just no fun. I so enjoy making coffee for someone, breaking their fast, and planning a day with a lovely lady.

This day was to start with coffee at ACOCA Cafe down on College Avenue. I'd meant to do so back in 2024 but did not for reasons lost in the mists of time and instead ended up going to Copper Rock Coffee Company. I find also that I never took a photograph of the ACOCA's red exterior which makes it really stick out. The owners did a reasonable job of overcoming the industrial ambience of the place and gave it a modicum of cozziness, er, coziness.

We placed our orders and took our seats next to the whiteboard upon which people are allowed to draw to their heart's content. Unsurprisingly, there were cats.

A nearby section of wall was devoted to paintings.

All of these cat pictures made me miss Piper. While I fully intended to adopt a new cat, I wasn't sure when I'd so. Dealing with Piper's death and my divorce simultaneously made me hesitant to adopt right away. Too many feelings and too many memories make it hard to think clearly, at times.

After breakfast we headed to Sunset Point Park in nearby Kimberly for a walk.

The first thing I noticed were the permanent cornhole boards. I'd never seen such things before but find them to be a fine idea.

The bathroom building was painted with a lovely rainbow sky-forest motif.

The scenic overlook was quite, well, scenic.

Just around the bend one could wander down to the river and see all the fancy houses on the shore.

A nearby squirrel looked down upon us letting us know that he was not too happy with the tourists.

A doe wandered by looking a bit mangy. She wandered across the grassy field and into the woods beneath the overlook.

It neared 10 o'clock so we returned to the car and headed out. Because my ladyfriend likes jerky, we made a bee line to All Things Jerky.

They go well beyond beef and have all manner of jerky such as venison, elk, alligator, camel, et al. I suppose a little kangaroo jerky is as close as I'll come to an Explorers Club dinner.

In addition to a wide variety of meats, they also offer sundry flavors such as pepper, teriyaki, dill pickle, Dr. Pepper something something, and so on.

The gentleman behind the counter was very friendly and broke the news that he is tired of the snow and heading for warmer climes. Thusly All Things Jerky was going to be on the market soon.

They also had hot sauce on offer including this one which made me chuckle and put "South of Heaven" in my head despite it being from the wrong album.

Our final stop was going to involve cats, if you can believe such a thing - The Pawffee Shop Cat Cafe.

We arrived a bit before our appointed hour and so got coffee and waited out the short time before we could go into the cats' half of the cafe. 

When we went in, there were cats everywhere but so too were young children. The race was on to find cats to pet. I believe this one was under a bench and rather feisty so we were warned to steer clear.

This feline was relaxing at the top of a cat tree in the open and so she was liable to get lots of pets. Here she is trying to get the human stank off.

And this little lady was in her own private suite for reasons I cannot recall. Perhaps she was recovering from a feline illness and had to remain segregated from her brethren.

After petting various cats and watching kittens energetically scoot around the floor to the delight of toddlers, my heart ached for Piper and yearned for a cat of my own.

When our time with the cats was up, my ladyfriend and I headed home. On the one hand, I really missed Piper. On the other, I was able to shed my (admittedly mild) notions of Appleton as a place to go to get away from my wife and instead view it as the place I go to see Stick Men. It was really nice to be making pleasant, happy memories with someone new.

We didn't run into anymore lions with wings but we did wander by a mural with a chimeric cow. What do you call a cow with the head of a horse? A cowtaur? A hippoboûs?

And look at those rabbits.

They take on an extra layer of creepiness for me now that I am reading Absolution.

While writing these two posts on our venture to Appleton, I realized that I never wrote about my trip there in July 2024. The destruction of my marriage was in full-swing and, feeling blue, I didn't do a whole lot of writing. That and I was always off somewhere else, whether it be purely psychologically or physically too. Dread does not inspire me to write, I guess.

But I had a great time in Appleton. Not only was the Stick Men show great, but I wandered around the city and enjoyed my time there greatly.

There were ghost signs.

And lots of pelicans hanging out by the dam.

Jones Park had plenty of rabbits. (I didn't see a one eating a crab. Ever.)

I wandered what Google Maps calls the City Park Historic District and saw some lovely old homes which had turrets.

This one had a cat looking down upon me with derision.

The History Museum at the Castle had a neat Harry Houdini exhibit. Although born in Budapest, Houdini's family emigrated to the United States and settled in Appleton.

In the basement was a rail exhibit featuring a model rail setup of the old paper mill on the river.

The gentleman who built it was there and talked about the city's history and its life after paper. He proudly pointed out various details in his wonderful work.

And here's a quote from Emerson that was on the back of a store.

I don't know how it is that the Appleton Beer Factory attracts Stick Men but I am happy to make a trek up there every year or 2 to see them. Not too long after the show, a recording of it appeared on Dime just as the taper said it likely would.

I don't know of any bands of note from Appleton but here's a bit of garage rock from 1965 from Appleton's Denny & The Catalinas.

Brats for breakfast

Yesterday my ladyfriend brought over brats for breakfast, the early start to Bratfest for we wage slaves.

I put mustard and pickles that my boss made on mine. A fine way to start my workday.

We sow the seeds, Nature grows the seeds

I put my garden in today. It's rather meagre but it'll do.

We've got the obligatory tomatoes, a serrano, and some flowers called something Bells. Just a little fresh veg and some color to brighten up the place.

Willow is my familiar

Willow is settling in nicely. She uses her litter box just fine and I have found a wet food she likes: tuna AND salmon. She is very beautiful and brings a warmth to my apartment; she animates my humble abode as she zips around, pausing occasionally to look at her human with those big, inviting eyes.

She's not been here even 48 hours so she seeks cover a lot of the time.

Still, Willow is a curious cat. I bought her a cat tree today. I hope she likes it. Or, at least, sinks her claws into it instead of the couch.

Vernal Prog in Appleton

When I saw that Stick Men were returning to the Appleton Beer Factory, I immediately bought a ticket because having a ticket obligates one to go even if the show is out of town. They were last there in 2024 and it was a great concert which allowed me to rock out within mere feet of prog gods. Seeing Peter Gabriel live, Tony Levin was this small figure in the distance playing bass or Chapman stick but at the Appleton gig, he was about 6 or 8 feet away and seemed to be simultaneously larger than life and just this guy who happened to have a Chapman stick hanging down in front of him. I could see his fingers work their magic on the stick as he culled manic melodies from the 10 strings of the mysterious instrument.

And so last month my ladyfriend and I made a trek to Appleton for an overnighter on a cloudy afternoon. Upon pulling into the parking lot, we spied this lion donning wings and with what I take to be the Appleton skyline painted on it outside the hotel's entryway.

I wondered if there are more chimeric lions around town just as other Wisconsin burgs have painted cows and Madison has various decorated Bucky Badgers that are to be found around town.

********

Back in 2024 I had come to Appleton to see a band perform but also to find respite from my wife and my marriage. But now I had a new partner. Instead of wandering Appleton alone, I had someone to explore the town with.

Our first stop was The Cozzy Corner for dinner. I'd stopped in there last time I was in town and enjoyed the blues/R&B decor as well as the food. My ladyfriend had been there a few times back in the day when she'd been in town for conferences.

I went with chicken and ribs.

My lady and I were in agreement: the ribs were dry and had a weird gritty/sinewy kind of texture which we thought was from being reheated. Not beyond edible but disappointing. Perhaps they'll be better on our next visit when Stick Men are back in a year or two.

To cheer ourselves up, we stopped in at The Book Store. That's not true. We stopped in because both of us love books and bookstores and would have done so even if our dinner had been superlative. Perhaps unimaginatively named, it was a spacious spot with rows and rows of shelves bursting with books, glorious books.

The romance section was likely the largest I've seen in any bookstore ever. Harlequin novels were categorized by cover color, whatever that indicated, and the sheer volume of space dedicated to this genre was a bit disconcerting. They even had an "extra spicy" section.

I dared not crack the spine of any of these "romances" lest I blush once learning what playing doctor truly entails.

Someone involved with the store is a Doctor Who fan. Tom Baker was to be found in a couple different spots in the sci-fi section.

The Doctor's arch enemies were lying in wait at the checkout ready to exterminate unsuspecting readers.

I ended up buying a book of poetry.

At first I thought that it was my first tome of verse but that's not true. It's the second as I have a copy of The Waste Land by T.S. Eliot on my shelf by which I mean still in a box somewhere.

I'd first run into Mary Oliver's work via the woman who organizes the Token Creek cleanup excursions that I've attended and thought that it was a good time to delve into her writing as I'd found the readings of a couple of her poems to be absolutely lovely.

With our purchases in hand, we headed back to the hotel where I'd relax for a little while before heading back downtown for the show while my ladyfriend would settle in for the night.

********

The Appleton Beer Factory was hoppin' when I got there. There was a spot at the bar just for me and I cozied up with the beer menu. An Irish dark lager stood out for me. If I recall correctly, it was on nitro and was only around 3.5% A.B.V. meaning I could have 2 or 3. It was really tasty with a smooth body and a dry, mild roastiness. Just perfect.

As showtime approached, I went into the backroom which had a stage nestled in amongst the conical fermenters and boilers, kilometers of pipes, and plumbing equipment. Off to the side I noticed a guy setting up his recording rig and assumed it was the same taper from last year. I asked him if his recording was going to end up being available on Dime and he replied that it would, if turned out well enough.

Last time drummer Pat Mastelotto had a medical emergency and was unable to perform. Sitting in for him was his drum tech, methinks. This night, however, Mastelotto was ready, willing and able.

I adore Pat Mastelotto's drumming. His playing is intricate yet not overly busy, exciting but not pushy. He'll trigger something MIDIly with one hand and then starting playing a drum or cymbal while his other hand keeps a beat with a shaker. There's a lot going on but not to distraction. It's such a pleasure to watch him ply his trade.

The show began with a bit of improv before they went into "Cusp". I love this song! Mastelotto is just behind the beat and he looks like an octopus as he seems to have enough arms to constantly reach for a cymbal or a floor tom. Levin is playing a melodic lead, while Markus Reuter conjures a bass line from his touch guitar.

This was followed by "Brutal", the title track of their last album. I hadn't heard any of their new material at the time but really enjoyed it as the song had a kind of swagger - a swagger run through a regimen of Crimsonesque angular THRAK. Speaking of which, we were treated to a Fripp solo tune, "Breathless", in addition to a few Crimson tunes.

All of the Frippery sat well next to the Stick Men originals. The virtuoso playing was a joy to behold whether the song was a chaotic rocker or something quieter and more contemplative.

I stopped at the merch table after the show and grabbed a copy of Brutal before heading back to the hotel, ears ringing.

Stepping into our room, I found my ladyfriend fast asleep. Only her head remained uncovered while the rest of her body lay enshrouded by the blanket. It was a lovely, peaceful moment. The look on her face was one of serenity and I felt wanted coming to a bed with a woman who desired to be next to me. It was also great knowing that I would return home and deal not with a failing marriage but with a burgeoning romance. Life got worse after my last visit but it has since gotten much better.