Hey Sylvia, it is summertime and I'm ready for some crunch.

How about you?

I am too.

And nothing's crunchy or better than a lot of things for the summer picnics, but a

king of the picnic is the loyal and lowly.

Many would think potato

Potato chip.

Yum.

Oh my gosh.

Who can go on a picnic without a potato chip?

Right.

gotta have it and you gotta have the dips too.

Now, in my normal life, when I'm not on a picnic, I try to stay away

from the dips, but you give me some french onion dip and I like the kind

where you get it in the chip aisle.

I can't remember the brand.

I think it may be Lays or something.

And you know how dips are.

You gotta have that special taste that you want.

And mine is French So there you have it.

You know, just along with the, I'll even have it with potato salad because

it's a different kind of potato.

Well, French Onion is actually pretty good.

Would you get the Knorr mix?

And you put it in the cream cheese, not in the cream cheese, it's in the sour cream.

And you add a little extra wor worre.

Yeah, that's how we made it.

But anyway, there's so many interesting stories about the potato chip.

And you know, there's a lot of history involved in the

potato chip as well, right.

I love this one.

George Crumb, a chef at the Moon's Lakehouse Tavern in Saratoga, New York.

It's, and there's a lot of stories about, but this is the most

prevalent one named George Crumb.

I love that name.

And he made a potato chip because one of the Vanderbilts.

kept sending back those french fries as being too thick.

what is a chip, but a tiny, sliver of a potato.

So that's what he did.

He made those slivers of potato chips.

Thank you, Mr. Vanderbilt.

Mm-hmm.

So basically he said, you didn't like my french fries.

I'll show you how thin they should be, and made them wafer thin

and fried them up and a crunch.

You go?

Mm

We should have made Mr. A King or something.

I mean the prevalence of potato chips, it's one of those

things In fact, it's kind of the branding they've made us want it.

And every iteration that you could imagine, one food could

go through, you know, 'cause you move from, into grocery stores.

And then I love this part, I just gotta say it, Laura Scudder, a woman

entrepreneur, invented wax paper bags.

And that was the gateway to mass marketing probably for a

lot of things, but packaging.

would've thought, right?

A wax paper bag.

from what I understand in researching that a little bit as well, is that the

wax paper, I mean, first of all it was a young woman, I have to give her

credit, right, to be credit and then very creative about this, but ironing,

who would've thought that ironing would've help somebody find an invention,

iron the edges of the wax paper.

So they held together and poof,

It's amazing.

history Channel does these histories of American institutions

and fascinating a idea.

At a simple moment in time just exploded.

And they also use nitrogen gas for a preservation agent, and

that sounds just totally icky.

But now, there are all kinds of things on the packaging that say preservation.

But anyway, right now we're gonna talk about this.

It's an ode to the great potato chip.

And here's one I love.

It expanded and some other countries got into the act.

But I have to mention this guy's name 'cause I love it, and I'm sure it was a

nickname, but it was Joe Spud Murphy, who started doing a little experimentation.

So cheese slash onion and salt and vinegar, and the spices

were sealed in a separate bag.

Ooh.

So it's, it's like you get the, the stuff to sprinkle on top of it.

Kind of like when you buy yogurt

Yeah, you can put

for breakfast at like Starbucks, and you put the sprinkles on top of it.

You could put your cheese and onion and salt.

But there was another guy Spuds

SPEDs cohort.

Yeah,

Spuds employee

. Bloy, Seamus, Burke.

Don't you just love

I love that.

Seamus, shameless Seamus, I should say, who like had the idea of cheese

and onion flavor, and that's really hot in the uk, but you know, I didn't

know about salt and vinegar, flavoring.

Really till we took a trip to Canada and it seemed like there was all over

Canada, salt and vinegar, potato chips, and it was, I'm not, I'm not a fan.

I like my old fashioned.

Just give me the potato chip.

Plain, unadulterated as they are.

Leave em mal alone.

Yeah.

But if you.

It's kind of like the toothpaste aisle even.

You can lose your mind with all the options you have because

you've got all these tons and tons.

A barbecue of course, is huge.

And by the way, my story on barbecue potato chips, I told you this before, but

on the 19 hour drive, during the midst of the pandemic, in a tiny corner of

one of those giant suburban Chevrolets, like they ride the president around in.

All that I could reach.

'cause I was sharing the seat with two children who were squirmy

and mom and dad and Bernie.

And it was like this thing was packed and I could find the barbecue potato chip

bag and that's, I just lived on barbecue potato chips I mean, it was the pandemic,

you couldn't even go in anywhere.

So I on barbecue potato

and you get that.

coloring from the flavoring all over your fingers,

Oh yeah, that's kind of planned so that you lick the fingers, but

you know, you have baked organic light, locale, low fat, all of those

things have now come into our lives.

Low-fat potato chip.

No,

break, right?

Oh no, not

good.

But there was a low-fat potato chip.

Remember they used the Olesta oil

I do remember That that was not funny, but it was funny.

That did not become a tradition unless you wanted to live your life

in the bathroom because apparently they gave everybody diarrhea.

Uh, no, I'm not gonna try low fat potato chip.

if you're gonna do that, do it all the way.

And I don't want to eat my potato chips in the bathroom.

Thank you very much.

that.

Pringles.

Uh, people love them because they're so tiny and thin and can eat a

lot of them, but they're also the unhealthiest supposedly, because

they have high saturated fat.

But you know, the way I look at, it's like they tell us not to eat hot dogs.

Right?

And, so it takes 10 seconds off your life.

If you think about the joy that eating a hot dog with a side

of chips, how cool that is.

The joy as if you're with family.

Usually are you with friends?

So you know Why not?

bags are never big enough

tea

on sandwich

it'll bring you in the endorphins or whatever stuff that is inside

of you that gets released.

I think that offsets the 10 seconds if you want.

Hear my analysis, Dr. Still.

potato chips and hot dogs, which we call in our house packers and snout.

So potato chips and packers and snouts.

That's kinda like fish and chips, it's not really chips,

it's really french fries kind of

Right.

I got it.

I got it.

Oh my goodness.

And nobody can eat just one.

Of course, the old commercials that became Traditions in our lives.

Right.

Yeah.

And it's gonna get even bigger with ai.

It's a new age of marketing.

It's analyzing consumer behavior.

Social media trends.

I'll tell you, one of the biggest campaigns of all time was Lays that

did a do us a flavor campaign, which led to chicken and waffles flavor,

uh, wasabi, and some other things.

And it'll just get bigger and bigger.

And sometimes you just kind potato chip, right?

Right?

No, there's that whole flavor.

flavor explosion, which I think is fine because, well, after all we have

to be a little experimental 'cause that's how new ideas come about.

But even still, I think, the old fashioned one, the thin little.

The, the crunchy, but the, the kind of potato chip that you can't pick a

dip up in is very difficult, but those potato chips are so good because, you

know it's the taste of home, right?

people will kind of segue that the, uh, Lay's Classic is the number one.

And it is a very thin, you can't do a dip on it unless you're like me and you

put the dip out on a plate and then you just, you know, it's easier that way.

You're not dipping it out the, out of the pan, you know?

But I'm wondering if when you're cooking because that's another thing that can

be done, is cooking with potato chips.

There's lots of things that we

I wonder if using, I didn't see this anywhere, but I wonder if the

more classic style of thin Chip is actually better for cooking.

I dunno.

Interesting.

I don't know, but it that actually, well, I'll have to ask Bob, you that

actually might be the dietetic chip, because it's so thin, but even still,

you don't eat just one at a time.

You kind of have to eat like two or three at a time at at least, but.

Yes.

So asking Bob, we'll, go ask Bob.

Bob actually is very good at coming up ways to, I don't

know, make a mess in the kitchen.

He's always experimenting with

But then we wouldn't have our catchphrase go ask Bob.

Go ask Bob.

That's right.

I think that's our new catch phase.

Go

Go ask Bob GAB.

Yeah, my dad, my dad used to have this saying called LBDI let Bob do it

I'm loving that role for him.

I'm loving that.

right.

And we have a pope named Bob.

So we'll see what he has to come up with with the potato side.

But

anyway, Bob makes potato.

for Bob, by the

way.

a big responsibility.

Yes.

So Bob makes potato chips on the grill.

Well, they're not really potato chips.

They're a little soggy thin, but he planks them really thin and, just

puts, spray on them, like a Pam spray on them and then grills 'em.

And sometimes they work and sometimes they don't.

But either way, it's still a great way to eat a potato that's

a little different than baked

or,

kind of like some of those kind of things that are soggy, you know, or

charred a little bit, and those kind of.

Are green on the edges.

Yes, yes.

before we go on, on all sorts of things, 'cause we can go off on a tangent on

this 'cause there are a lot of things, including some traditions that are not

necessarily in the cards for us anymore.

But let's take a quick break because we have a really wonderful statement

from one of our listeners, which you'll hear in just a second.

So stay tuned.

We'll be right back with potato chips and traditions and things that go crunch.

Hey, Sylvia.

So thinking about things that go crunch.

Not in the night, but on the picnic table.

right.

Well maybe if you, if you get up in the middle of the night and you need a potato

Hey, there are some chips that are crunchier known for

their crunchy, loud, crunchy.

And yeah.

And so that would be the kind in the middle of the night.

You'd be, you snuck into the refrige or you the cabinet and you get the potato

chip bag down and you're supposed to be on a diet and you've sworn everybody

in the house to watch over you and make sure you don't eat anything.

You shouldn't eat, but you sneak down in the middle of the night and you crunch.

Do we have

The whole house knows about it, including the dog.

Yes.

Our dog, Otto was known for being a potato chip hound.

Of course, we kind of taught him that.

And one day we came back from the, well picking him up at the

groomer and they looked at us and said, does he like potato chips?

Because as a puppy, they'd let him out and run around and they opened a bag of

potato chips and the dog came running from across the room, says, yes, Otto

is a potato chip hound Otto, the dog.

I taught to say I love you,

Oh, I love these dogs.

Hey, uh, I will say though, just to quickly, back that up the

ridge, there's difference between ruffles and ridges and ruffles.

This is so scientific and I hope just bear, bear with me

more narrower, deeper V-shaped.

But the way the.

Wavy lays are these, they're wider, they're U-shaped and

some reason science here.

They're louder.

The crunch is louder.

So if you're sneaking into the pantry in the middle of the night, beware.

right.

So ruffles have ridges and lays are wavy, wavy lays.

So they're the two brands.

But, so that's part of the whole branding thing that is really interesting.

And you know, potato chips have become a very regional love kind of

thing.

yeah.

up by where we were in Cape Cod, they had, the Cape Cod chips that came in

these big tan tins, and they still have them, they kind of look old fashioned

tins, but they were sort of a beige back with the Cape Cod chip

written on them and in brown.

And did you know that you can, first of all, you can't buy a bag.

At the time you had to buy them by the tin, which was

That is so cool.

and you could have your tin of potato chips delivered to your house when we were

kids, just like they used to deliver milk

Oh, that's amazing.

Did you keep one of those?

No, no.

That was considered garbage in our house, and we never had the

tins of potato chips delivered.

Friends had them delivered and we're like, mom, can we have the chip?

No.

That's not good for you.

That's parental neglect.

I know.

It was a parital abuse.

My mom, we didn't get the tins of chips delivered.

But the neighbors and other kids did,

so we'd sneak

childhood story is Mikesell's Mikes ells is the, I'm so proud, oldest

potato chip company in the country.

Mikesells.

I grew up with, Mikesells.

I'm like, and I still see them on the, uh, shelves and things.

So, yeah, so that's, I thought that was pretty cool.

That was, uh, that was our kind of thing, you know?

Well, it's kind of funny how the brand names have become so much a part

of our families and, and styles and traditions on that because, I mean,

immediately it says Mikesells well, of course, if Mikesells, I'm gonna buy.

Yeah, it's, brand loyalty and it is tradition when in and of itself, you

know that you choose that same kind because there are, like, for instance,

Boulder Canyon in the Rockies.

Boulder Canyon, I've seen that on the shelves, but they have such things

as red wine vinegar, very Colorado ish, you know, balsamic rosemary,

Ooh, Lala.

Poor's Brothers used to be very popular in Southwest, but I

think they went outta business.

But here's another one.

Mid-Atlantic.

Have you heard of Route 11

No, I don't even know where Route or Route 11.

Well, I guess if it's it's route, if you're from the south, it's route.

If you're from the

Yeah.

But hand cooked in the Shenandoah Valley and they also have crab chips.

Crab chips, like chicken chip.

I've.

Don't say that

fast.

that three times faster, you'll end up saying chicken.

You know what?

I just suddenly realized that, I'm like, I gotta be careful here.

But you know, I don't think of the Shenandoah Valley and Crab.

Do you?

no, I think of it ' cause where is it?

It's in Virginia,

right?

Maryland.

Is Baltimore.

Baltimore.

Baltimore Crabs.

Yes.

I don't think about

and isn't that interesting?

Well, yeah.

And then in the southeast there's Golden Lake.

Five kinds of barbecue.

I guess they have all these kinds.

And then of course there are international brands.

in the UK they have prawn cocktail.

Prawn cocktail, but you have a cocktail sauce 'cause the dips

are as important as the chips.

Right.

And you

Oh, well, you know, right, exactly.

So dips and chip, you cannot have chips alone, especially with your, well,

you can have chips alone if you're eating them by yourself or you're

with your, sweetie or honey or even your kids in the small little bags.

But if you're with a group of people, you have to have a dip.

Right.

So my folks would have their cocktail parties in the, oh, I guess

it was the sixties and seventies, and, My mom made this shrimp dip

with something called SauceSea and an SAU dash SE shrimp cocktail.

They came in these little glass jars with lids that you had to

sort of pry off with a, um, like a beer, a beer puller, offerer,

beer opener, whatever you call it.

And, those little jars became juice jars afterwards.

Just kinda like the jelly jars used to be with the, cartoons on them, but

this shrimp dip was not necessarily, or the shrimp cocktail is what it was.

Not necessarily the best, but it had such a strong shrimp and horseradish flavor

to it that when you took three of those jars, you mixed it with a pound of.

Well, a brick, I'll call it, I guess it's a pound of, cream cheese in the

blender and a little bit of horseradish.

Yeah.

gosh.

That I had just like died and gone to heaven as a kid.

And because I'm a girl, it was pink.

And so who has pink food?

It was so good.

Yep.

And so And I make it today, but I 'cause saucy shrimp.

See, saucy shrimp cocktail jars aren't around anymore.

so I make up my own, I kind of

Hey, can I make a joke?

Can I.

Go.

Please go

you have to have a dip to put your potato chips in.

Besides that crazy Uncle Jim that comes to every one of the family picnics.

Right.

A dip.

Get it?

Okay.

Uh,

Stupid joke.

Nah.

bad boo.

bad, bad, bad.

Change the

Give that girl another beer.

Uh, but other international things.

I mean like wasabi and seaweed.

is popular in Japan.

Amazingly Masala, Pandora.

Pandora

That's

in India.

Yeah.

I love this one in Ireland.

Shamrock and sour cream.

Ah, wonder what that means, Shamrock.

So it all started with George Crum, although there is some, debate of

whether the French or the British had done this, but the potato chip seems

like a pretty American kind of food.

All red, white and blue and star spangled banner kind of

They followed us though.

You know, we're a leader, right?

I think, I think so.

There's so many different things that you can do with potato chips.

I mean, potato chips have become traditions on our food beyond just

eating them one at a time, right?

You've got,

casserole?

well, the chip topping, you put it on top of that.

Chicken pot pie, that instead of pastry topping you put in crushed chips.

I think it'd be kind of like almost a, because once some of the recipes call

for Ritz crackers, which are good, but you could also put potato chips on them

Well, growing up I remember friends whose moms made the, uh, the tuna

casserole or chicken cassel, but chicken was expensive at the time.

Tuna was the cheapest thing to do.

You make the tuna casserole with some sort of Campbell's cream of some

other glop in it, had some vegetables to make it look and taste good.

Well, I don't know if you put canned string beans into tuna

casserole, it doesn't look too good, but that's besides the point.

It was always topped with potato chips.

My mom never made that casserole.

I'm like, mom, how come we can't have that?

It's not good for you.

But yeah.

the other moms made it.

yeah, and then, using the chips for pie crust because they're salty, you

know, there's this great big thing going on now in that sweet and sour.

So, you know, you can like combine those two, two things like ice cream.

I'm

I never heard of like potato chips and

I haven't heard of it, but you have bacon, you have all kinds

of things and chocolate covered.

Don't forget chocolate covered

well, chocolate covered potato chips actually are pretty good.

They are better than pretty good.

I mean, that's why I gained five pounds at every Christmas.

yeah, so you got all of that.

And how about, potato chip sandwiches For real.

Yeah.

I thought that was a joke, but it, it was always like, I hate to say this,

it was always the fat guy who talked about potato chip sandwiches, right.

And think, I mean, potato chip sandwiches with a beer.

Yeah.

You go ahead and do that, you know, Bubba.

But anyway.

here's how they make potato chip sandwiches.

I had to look this one up 'cause I was like, you have got to be kidding.

This is the weirdest thing I've ever heard of.

And who would do it?

You take bread and butter.

So you take your bread, you butter it, and then you put as many chips as

you can between that bread and the two pieces of buttered butter, you know,

buttered bread, and then you bite it.

I'm gonna presume that it had to be Wonder Bread, because

otherwise it's gonna fall off.

So you gotta crunch down on it and it's all gonna stick together.

I don't even know if they sell Wonder Bread anymore.

Oh, yes, I do.

Oh, and it's so good.

you can also roll it up into little balls.

Have you ever rolled Wonder Bread up into Little Balls?

Oh yeah.

You throw 'em across.

So I've got a wonder quick.

I know we're on potato chips, but I'm gonna tell you a Wonder Bread story.

So we had radiant heat up in Connecticut, and the pipes in the 1955 house

were copper and the radiant heat.

The copper pipes actually start to corrode, and so every now and

then we get this little teeny tiny pinhole that would turn into a lake

in the middle of our living room.

And after one too many calls to the plumber, I called Bob one day and said,

you are gonna stay home from work.

This plumber's coming and you are gonna watch how to fix this, or

I'm gonna watch how to fix it.

We used to fix, go ask Bob, LBDI let Bob do it and Well, apparently he

learned somewhere that you ha you actually have to take the water outta

the pipe so you can sweat the pipe and, reattach a new piece and, solder it on.

If there's moisture in there, you can't do that.

So a plumber told him, you take Wonder Bread, you put it into a ball, and

you stick it on in either end of the pipe to get rid of the moisture

so the water doesn't drill through.

Then you solder on the new pipe and you think, well wait a second, but

Wonder Bread is gonna get all gummy.

No, it actually deteriorates and dissolves.

So it doesn't always build strong buddies to all ways,

I know, but they still have it and I'll have to remember that.

Wonder bread and potato chip sandwiches.

So I guess that's probably about, it's gonna be as healthy as you can get.

but let's go back to potato chip pie.

Do you know how to make a potato chip pie crust?

No, tell me.

Tell me, tell me.

Well, Sylvia, you should know this because apparently is a southern thing.

I had never heard about it up north or at, so I'm gonna blame

everything on you in the south.

I love that.

I love that.

A heavy responsibility.

Yeah, but I, I'll take it on.

The weird stuff comes from the Southerners in Kentucky.

Alright, so friends in Kentucky, yeah, you have to deal with me.

So what you do is First of all, you take your bag of potato chips,

you get this thin kind of potato chips, not the wavy ones, right?

You take your bag of potatoes, put it on the side, you take a half a

cup of whole milk, you take a quarter cup of sweet condensed milk and one

egg and two tablespoons of butter, and you mix that all up and make

sure it's all melted and, liquidy.

And then what you do is you pour those ingredients over your bowl, your two

cups of chips, the thin chips, so it gets

Yeah.

Yeah.

and then you lay your chips out in the bottom of a, pie pan.

And so they're kind of like flat and layered and sock,

the soggy ones that you like.

So, but they're even soggier.

And then you fill your pie with whatever pie filling you want,

and you bake it as normal,

How interesting.

right?

How interesting.

And then they suggest that too, on top of a chicken pot pie where

you would normally put a crust, a

traditional,

the soggy potato chips, or do you put the crunchy ones or you put the soggy

don't, you know, I think maybe you could do either one, because then

it would bake really nicely and.

I think the soggy ones would be better because yeah, they would bake

versus the crunchy

ones

love tops to be browned on pies and things like that.

I mean, I think I gotta have a crunchy crust and so Yeah.

That's kind of interesting.

we'll have to, we'll have to talk more about

We'll have to come up with some good ideas for, for potato chips on that one.

I'm thinking pie ala mode with.

Crunchy potato chip bottoms.

I don't

know, maybe you, you know, bake a potato chip bowl and

then put your ice cream in it.

Okay.

You try that.

I'll try that one.

Or maybe Bob will try.

We'll let Bob do it.

Remember the old commercial?

I know it was some kind of cereal commercial.

Let Mikey, Mikey will do.

Oh, Mikey, Mikey likes life.

Let, let, loves Mikey.

We'll let Bob do it.

Bob has a larger and larger role in this company.

With his podcasting.

very well,

Silent Bob gets to do everything

I love Bob.

I don't even know.

well, yes, yes, I do too.

But on that note, so our tribute to the lowly potato chip, not

so lowly, pretty crunchy, pretty delicious, and you never know.

Well, you do know because summertime, summertime is the best

time for potato chips, don't you

Yeah, except I must say I'll eat 'em even in the winter time.

Just put up a potato chip bag in front of me.

Don't threaten me with a good.

right?

So the next time you go out and have a picnic, or maybe you don't

have a picnic or better when you're walking down the grocery style aisle.

Grocery style grocery aisle, maybe it is a grocery style aisle.

Grocery store aisle.

Take a look at those bags of potato chip and think of.

Thank you, Mr. Crumb.

We appreciate your contribution

Nancy and Sil and

Bob.

of course.

And Bob, we'll see you soon and crunch.

We will hear you soon.

Bye-bye.