Carbohydrate love: Salt-and-pepper crisps! 'Sea salt and cracked black pepper', in fact, what with the british crisp ('chip') industry and its recent decision that everything tastes better if you give it a pretentious-ass name. And they're right! I don't even like pepper, but put it on some thincut fried potato with lemon concentrate and num num num num mmmmmmmm. Am wondering about the logistics of sending some over to moderntime, who was braver than me and first tried them. Yay, criiiisps. "These cylindrical fine little wafers are called 'chips' when served with game or poultry, but 'crisps' when sold already cooked in packets for serving with drinks."

So says Theodora FitzGibbon, and she should know. After all, she alerted me to the joy that is parsnip chips ('fries'); o the humble parsnip, most charming of all root veg. I bought a bag of the things, intending to make soup, and they've all gone the way of the frying pan. Perfect comfort food for watching Everwood to - we're at the episode where Ephram's mom has been dead for a year, and I kept having to change the channel whenever a flashback came up because she was SO ANNOYING. But Laynie! Teh ky00t! <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3!!!!!!! (in the land of The Severely Wrong, there was this one look Colin gave her that made my brain go so, right, post-coma, no memory, remembers this really cute girl? and it's not Amy, o no... hee.)

But! Theodora FitzG! She has this tendency to quote ancient-old recipies, like a salad from Richard II's mastercook dated 1390 or the Pyg Pye of the fourteenth century:
"Flea Pyg and cut him in pieces, season with peper and salt, and nutmeg, and large mace, and lay in your coffyn good store of raisins and currans, and fill with sweet butter and close it, and serve hot or cold."
It sounds especially impressive if you put on a broad Samwise Gamgee accent. ('flea' = flay; 'coffyn' = warm pastry raised around a wooden mould.)
And then she goes really mad and suggests a drink which involves leaving eggs in lemon juice until their shells dissolve, picking out the membranes and beating the remainder. And then putting rum and honey in it; as if anything can disguise the fact that this is Eggshell Juice we're dealing with here. 'Makes a good conversation piece', she says.

I'll bet it does.