Song of the day, 4 Juni 2026

I may watch Errol Morris' latest documentary, CHAOS: The Manson Murders, tonight. I have to grill chicken first.

Just some photos of the cutest cat in Eken Park

What is that thing you are putting in my face, hooman?

It's a bit odd for me to have a cat with all of her teeth again. (Sorry, Pipe.)

Song of the day, 1 Juni 2026

Ghost signs, Black River Falls

Songs of the day, 29 May 2026

Song of the day, 28 Mai 2026

My flowers aren't dead yet

My flowers are still alive!

Willow remains as cute as ever. I brought her home a week ago and she is settling in well. She's started hanging out with me in my office while I am working and hope that she'll be around during meetings soon as Piper was a Teams call star and my co-workers are anxious to see Willow.

I made hibiscus sun tea. While it's quite drinkable, I think another tea bag will be used next time.

I bought some woodruff to try and make a little Maiwein.

My ladyfriend saw these in the checkout aisle yesterday at the supermarket.

I love French onion soup so it was an auto-buy.

They were almost, but not quite entirely unlike French onion soup. Think the French onion soup mix you use for dips and then add some beef powder. The potatoes took the place of the toast on top and I didn't really catch any cheese. But they were oniony.

Canine art

Crouching Human, Sleeping Fawn

A co-worker took this photograph in rural DeForest. Mom took off when he approached and scowled from a distance.

Willow continues to be exceedingly cute

"What are you doing, hooman?"

"Look at that bird!"

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.