I have a guilty pleasure during football season, and its name is Potato Chips. Particularly when I had my double recliner and Sunday-morning soccer games, one of my favorite things to do in the fall was come home, shower, and plop onto the recliner with a bag of chips to watch the games and blissfully waste the rest of the day.
Since I got rid of the recliner and didn't catch that many games this season, Mr Chips and I have been a bit out of touch of late. Sure, we've had short, usually public, dalliances here and there, but nothing that involved the seductive opening of a fresh bag, the trying of a new flavor. No, in general, I have only recently seen Mr Chips at parties and other gatherings, where it's hard to be in the right mood. Which is really for the best; after all, our relationship can only be described as unhealthy.
But here I am, in a new place, and the familiar is comforting. And it is, after all, NFL playoff season. So while I'm taste-testing different brands of milk, juice, bread, and snacks to see which I like best, why not reacquaint myself with Mr Chips?
Let me establish here that I am neither particularly brand- nor flavor- loyal when it comes to potato chips. Sure, there are certain flavors or brands I dislike (I think of them as bad outfits I discourage Mr Chips from wearing, at least when meeting me), but sometimes I'm in the mood for sour cream n' onion, or salt n' vinegar, sometimes plain, occasionally BBQ, Lay's Wavy Ranch if I can get it (I haven't seen it outside of New England, alas), sometimes ruffled, sometimes not. So exploring new flavors is far from anathema. Which is good, since flavors overseas tend to be quite different from what's on the shelf at the UnSafeway.
In any case, it wasn't hard to find Mr Chips; he's everywhere (you can run, but you can't escape the long arm of the Lay). Here in China, his main guises seem to be fruit, poultry, and seafood. Now, far be it from me to reject the allure of lychee or mango potato chips without trying them, but I'm not so keen on the sweet-and-salty flavor combination ("swavory", as it was deemed at my former workplace), so I went the animal route.

In retrospect, perhaps I should have compared the Mexican Tomato Chicken and the French Chicken flavors, but at the moment that I was standing in the grocery store, I craved variety. And I figured I could guess what Mexican Tomato would taste like, so my sample selection comprises French Chicken, Sauteed Prawn, and Lime (I like the Tostitos with lime... how bad could it be?).
I might have to wait until the Super Bowl to actually do the taste test... check back for the verdict!