The first time I had one of these chips, it was after picking up someone off the floor as they fainted when I said “what’s an all-dress chip?”
I hadn’t ever heard of them before, much less had them, and even once I was corrected and told that the term was “all dressed,” it didn’t exactly sound appealing. After all, when I ask for my burger to be fully dressed, it usually means that I want everything on it…and I do NOT want everything on my chip.
I had already experienced the beloved ketchup chip (beloved by the crazy Canadians, that is…not myself) and further explanation that the chip was “kinda like ketchup chips with vinegar, salt, and pepper” really didn’t make the case for me to jump on the bandwagon.
The description, however, was surprisingly accurate AND it turns out the chips are delicious. Weird, I know. They really do kinda taste like a ketchup chip met up with a salt ‘n’ vinegar chip and said “hey, let’s experiment with a whole bunch of spices and seasonings that no one will be able to distinguish” and voila, Canadians favorite chips were born!
I suppose it’s kind of like the “everything bagel” of chips. You think it’s going to taste weird if you heard everything they put on it, but once you have it, you find that it’s actually pretty good (albeit, not for everyone, of course). They’re perfect for people who innocently dip their chips in ketchup or like stacking their chips directly on their sandwiches.
For about a year, I was pretty hardcore into cooking healthy for the entire family. We tried no dairy to isolate allergies; we tried bento boxes for a healthy twist on brown bagging’; we focused on homegrown produce and local meats; we cut out MSG, certain yellow preservatives, and white sugar; we replaced soy with things like amino acid sauce…
I didn’t go nuts with it all, but if you had my brownies during this time, you better believe they had pumpkin puree in them and you had no idea.
This also means that I made all of the dog’s food from scratch, too. If you aren’t familiar with how spoiled this dog was before we adopted him, it’s worth a few tear-jerking moments here.
I fully recognize that this isn’t really the norm, but it’s what worked for us and I didn’t think much of it. It was simply part of the routine and what needed to be done in order to keep everyone healthy and happy, so it’s what I did.
Well… that is… until one day, the girls came home from school and B saw me mixing the weekly batch of dog food in the kitchen sink.
(Yes, you read that correctly, by the way. Using the sink is a whole lot easier to mix a large batch in than trying to find an appropriate mixing bowl that will happily slop it all over the counter or table while you’re mixing and scooping. Just toss it all in the sink, do your thing, and when you’re done, run some watch to clean up. Voila!)
Anyway, so they come in and B is clearly excited, “Is that supper?!?” To which I could only reply that no, no that is not their supper, and that the food she is so obviously drooling over is indeed the family pet’s dinner instead.
She was noticeably disappointed at that point and announced, “I wish I could eat Buddy’s dinner… ” which is the same point where I realized that I had unknowingly created jealousy over a dog’s food. Oops!
I made up for it immediately by changing our dinner plans to something extra yummy, but it was the first time I had ever seen someone wish s/he were eating an animal’s food instead. I’m not sure if that means the food I was feeding the dog was particularly delicious or if I was failing in the excitement factor for the human food being produced.
Either way, the dog was certainly being fed well, eh?12
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