For the last several years I have been collecting bags of chips that I eat that are new to me. I think I may have taken the wrong message from William Davies King’s Collections of Nothing, a half memoir, half investigation of his real weird and seemingly pointless collections (he collects every single breakfast cereal box he has ever eaten, for instance, or, more interestingly, the interior patterns of security envelopes), and I thought to myself, King was onto something, though it did pretty much choke out his life, so what if I just kept the flattened bags? I’ve tried over 500 new-to-me bags of chips over the past several years. I consider crisps (like a Pringle) a chip, but don’t extend this collection to popcorn, Cheetos, Funyuns, pretzels, or other snacks, though I will occasionally review them with the other chips on my Instagram @angermonsoon. The bags have rapidly started taking up more space than expected: I bought five binders that are now chock full of them, and the piles of bags, both unopened (in the queue for tasting) and opened now litter my office at school and at home. The collection here is a subset of the recent bags I’ve tasted, including some huge winners (Old Dutch Ripples Ketchup) and some losers (Old Dutch Bacon). My doctor suggested I try cutting back on the amount of salt and chips I eat, which I have a hard time doing, because I do this for ART or possibly for other reasons obscure even to myself, but I no longer finish most of the bags I open, as a gesture to not dying. The Great Lakes Salt, Pepper, and Onion were an exception, perhaps because the bag was small and the chips are excellent.
