UP IN SMOKE: A true calamity occurred last Friday in New Brunswick, where, for reasons yet unknown, the Covered Bridge Potato Chip plant burned to the ground, a total loss, particularly devastating to its town’s economy given that some ten percent of its residents worked there.
Now, as the photos at the top may hint, I am a fan of Covered Bridge Potato Chips—a recent, zealous convert, the best type of fanatic—and I've been meaning to mention them to you for awhile now. As longtime readers may recall, I operate on the principle that capitalists doing capitalism is not news—no matter how breathlessly riveting a publicity-seeking news release may attempt to spin, say, Joe’s Mufflers winning a prestigious muffler industry award for selling the most mufflers at a muffler shop. But there are exceptions to any rule, and Covered Bridge is one of them.
You know how supermarkets occasionally get a deal on a bulk purchase of some off-brand item, then pile this item high on display islands, attempting to lure us into taking the bait? Zehrs did this last fall with some potato chip brand I’d never heard of—Covered Bridge. Week after week we would pass this towering pyramid of bagged chips, a rainbow of different packaging and flavours, and every week my curiosity gnawed away a little more until I finally caved and went for a two-for-$7 deal.
It would be overkill to claim connoisseur qualifications, so let’s just say I’m a potato chip aficionado of some decades, although a snob I am not. For years when we lived in Indonesia, the only chips available were Lay’s, the crazy-thin, oil-soaked ones, imported from Australia, but they were something and I made do. (And at least they weren’t that ghastly dried Pringle’s paste, with the “chips” pressed into, as the internet tells us, “hyperbolic paraboloids” and consisting of only 42 percent potato.)
So it was with surprise and delight that the potato chips I’d never heard of turned out to be the best potato chips I’d ever had—and this very much includes the ingredients. For the regular chip there are just three: russet potatoes, canola oil, sea salt. That’s it. The russets are brilliant. Never had I tasted a potato chip that tasted so much like a potato. And while I haven’t tried any of the flavoured varieties, their ingredient lists don’t look unduly alarming, at least as far as this type of processed food goes and in comparison to other brands.
Covered Bridge’s choice of canola oil is also key, rather than the sunflower oil now so often seen with chips, which releases aldehydes (implicated in DNA damage contributing to heart disease and Alzheimer’s) when used at sustained high heat levels. Check your favourite chip package's ingredients. Maybe you have more faith, but I don’t trust multinational food conglomerates not to extend their frying oils way past their proper cutoff time in the vats just so they can save a few bucks on refills.
Amazingly, we found the Covered Bridge island still fairly stocked yesterday at Zehrs, and the price was still two-for-$7. (Sea salt was sold out at Sobeys South Pelham over the weekend, at $5 a bag.) Unless there’s an enormous warehouse somewhere packed with stock, it’s hard to believe these will last long. Sure enough, there’s already a listing on eBay—“Because of tragic, recent events these may be the last bags of Covered Bridge Chips available, get them while you can!”—$55 for six bags.
BARGAINS STILL AVAILABLE: I’m happy to report that a number of our office items have found new homes. Our physical Fonthill office space is closing at the end of March, and last week I presented a list of items for sale or for free as a result. The paper shredder is gone, the tall metal storage cabinet is now with a Welland Motorcycle Club member, one of the metal desks went for scrap, and the portable room air conditioner was bought by a local teacher to cool his classroom. Yes, he’s using his own money to obtain basic comfort for his kids, something that you’d think the school board should be responsible for. (Sure hope teachers aren’t also having to provide their own fire extinguishers and smoke alarms.)
Some items remain—the fine wooden hutch, the larger metal desk, and the giant table (apparently once used for layout at the Welland Tribune), among others, all awaiting your discerning acquisition.
NO MORE SNOW: That’s it. We pulled the reflector stakes out at the end of the driveway and stored them until autumn, which officially means it’s not allowed to snow again until then. It’s possible that in 15 years in this house this has never worked. But never say never. See you next time.
