potato chips and bean dip

Potato crisps elsewhere in the civilized world, here, these are cut a little bit on the thick side because I will use them to scoop a flavorful bean sludge mixture. The bean dip is the bean soup made earlier. It thickened somewhat in the refrigerator while stored and that suits my purpose fine. 

The dip needs heat so a fresh jalapeño is added. Tinned jalapeño would do, as would any other form of capsicum heat, powdered, flakes, dried whole, I've got a ton of it over here, I tell you. Maybe ounces. I buy it here and there on impulse just to have the odd chiles around. As a matter of fact, I just now picked up three packages of various dry chiles with no immediate purpose in mind. I'm sort of eager to tear into the packages and see how they are. Maybe I will. Just open one and put 'em in an omelet or something to gauge their effect. 

Did I mention the seeds that I planted from grocery store chiles grew and matured and now I put the plants out on the balcony to get full on sun and toughen 'em up. They both flowered like crazy but the flowers keep falling off so they don't have very many chiles, still, they're fun to watch. I'm hoping the wind will help them pollinate themselves and crank out a few more chiles. They are nearing the end of their cycle. They are annuals. But they can be forced into behaving as perennials. The odd thing is, in the north they are annuals but in their Central America home countries they are perennials. FACT !

The potato slices were rinsed in cold water to rid them of surface starch and then dried before being dropped into hot oil. 

Salted while vulnerable with powdered gray sea salt, low in sodium and high in minerals, and mmm-mmm-mmm, boy is it ever good. 

I read in fifteen different places today of a study by the New England Journal of Medicine that ... okay FINE! ... four different places today, 121,00 people were studied for 20 years, and eating one serving of potato chips a day adds 1.28 pounds over four years. 3.35 pound gain for one daily serving of French fries. Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha aaaaah.

Please.

Come on. Like a 121,000 people actually ate Fries and crisps every single day for four years. Whoever has that many potato crisps and French fries deserves to gain a lot more weight than that. It doesn't sound all that bad, actually. I could go for a few more pounds. Several more pounds for that matter.