Happy New Year, my friends and also people I don’t know but who read my blog and thus mean the world to me. We’ve been holed up in the country, our days passing in a blur of nude babies wearing adults’ sunglasses and eating nectarines, plastic toy animals swimming in the dog’s water bowl, fast trips to the beach to avoid the worst of the sun, and being very careful not to encounter Bruno, the brown snake who is rumoured to dwell under the kitchen.
More guests arrived and three cats became four; an eleven-dollar blow-up paddling pool provided at least twelve dollars worth of fun; I bought some vintage tea towels from an op shop from which I plan to make simple sundresses for May Blossom. Being on holidays makes me do things like that. It gives me a sense of tremendous possibility, out of all proportion to my skills. Let’s all just say what we’re thinking on that front, which is that a person who can’t get their child to sleep for more than forty-five minutes a day and also purports to be a blogger and also can’t sew may very well end up with a pile of cut-up old pillowcases, no new simple toddler dresses and a growing sense of failure. Or Operation Drop Standards might come into effect and May Blossom will end up with three dresses that are quite pillowcase-shaped, once I cut a hole for her head and slits for her arms to go through.
I have been poring over my new cookbook, The Food Matters Cookbook by Mark Bittman. It’s lovely and inspiring, and so I declare this the year of eating more interesting wholegrains grains and vegetables and using meat more as a flavour than ballast and also drinking Hendricks Gin with mini cucumbers and tonic (that part is not technically part of the Food Matters manifesto, but that doesn’t mean it’s not a cracking idea).
Here’s a recipe to start your new year off right, because I am going to assume that some of you are in the southern hemisphere and still on summer holidays. You don’t want to be cooking wholegrains in this weather. Bittman can wait for a bit. This recipe was inspired by a Mexican street food dish, encountered back when H and I were childless and fancy free and went on exciting trips without fretting over car seats.
Limey Potato Chips
Ingredients
1 bag of potato chips. I used Smiths original crinkle cut because that’s what was in the pantry but Kettle Chip style would be better, not that this version isn’t spectacular.
1 lime
Method
Place the chips in a bowl. Cut the lime in half. Squeeze it over the chips. Eat them. Get out the fancy writing paper and envelopes you got for Christmas when you were six and haven’t used. Write me a thank-you note. You’re welcome.
Keep hidden from any toddlers you are trying to convince to go to bed with the argument that the grown-ups are definitely not going to do or eat anything exciting that they will miss out on.
Tasting notes: Very good when eaten alongside (or after) one or two Hendrick’s gins and tonic with cucumber. Thoroughly delicious and entirely dehydrating.
Variation: add a sprinkling of chilli powder. Go on, be daring. But don’t feel you have to because the pure lime version is still the business.