ornoth | Friday Five #20

What drinking water do you prefer—tap, bottle, purifier, etc.?: To be honest, I’m not much of a water snob. Bottled tends to be bland, and tap kinda skunky, but it really doesn’t matter much. Having said that, though, I do have a Brita that most of my drinking water goes through, en route to becoming Gatorade. I do drink a great deal of water and water-turned-Gatorade during the summer months, so it makes sense to filter out any extraneous stuff. And I think the cat prefers filtered water to tap.
What are your favourite flavor of chips?: Ah, finally a topic I can wax emotional about! Unfortunately there are so many! I’m a big fan of sour cream & onion chips, most particularly Cape Cod Sour Cream & Chive. I also tend to like barbecue chips, although that’s an adolescent taste that I’ve mostly grown out of.

But my biggest revelations were also simultaneous discoveries in the mid-eighties: on an early-eighties trip to Pennsylvania I purchased several bags of Jays Jalapeno Krunchers!, and on trips to New York City I came across New York Deli Kettle Cooked Jalapeno Potato Chips. I truly adore jalapeno-flavored chips, but they’re usually difficult to obtain in Boston. In fact, on my recent trip to Austin for the 2003 Dargon Writers’ Summit, I went out of my way to pick up four different kinds of jalapeno chips, and wrote up the following review:
So throughout the weekend, I tried four different varieties of chips. The store-brand “H.E.B. Thin Jalapeno Flavor Potato Chips” were, as advertised, thin like original Lays chips, and thus weren’t a big favorite of mine, whereas P. specifically prefers them over the crunchier kettle-style chips that are more common. An example of the latter are the “Dirty Jalapeno Heat Potato Chips” (http://www.dirtys.com/ and http://www.taquitos.net/snacks.php?snack_code=237), which indeed tasted kind of dirty, and thus were my least favorite of the bunch. Favorable reviews are indicated for “Miss Vickie’s Jalapeno Flavored Potato Chips” (http://www.taquitos.net/snacks.php?snack_code=449), as well as “Zapp’s Hotter ’n Hot Jalapeno Potato Chips” (http://www.zapps.com/), which receive my personal nod of approval.
And what’s with the Queens English spelling “favourite”, but then the American “flavor”? And then topping it off with the American meaning of potato “chips” versus English fish and “chips”? If you’re gonna be affected, at least be consistent…
Of all the things you can cook, what dish do you like the most?: Uh, ice cream?

Actually, I like most everything I cook, because I had to go out of my way to learn to cook it. But I particularly like my pork chops, canadian bacon, omelets, fresh veggies, sour cream cookies, spaghetti sauce, and pasta alfredo.
How do you have your eggs?: One of this year’s New Years resolutions was to virtually stop eating eggs. I’d been eating about a half dozen eggs a week, and, among other factors, I’d begun gaining weight, so I cut them out.

Historically, I’ve always preferred scrambled eggs with salt, pepper, and ketchup. More recently, I’d gotten good at making omelets, which were usually filled with either Italian style or jalapeno chicken sausage.
Who was the last person who cooked you a meal? How did it turn out?: If restaurants don’t count, I have absolutely no idea. Because I’m one of the more finicky people in the world, I’m not a big fan of letting anyone else cook for me. If I had to guess, I’d say my mother, but that wouldn’t have been any less than three months ago.