in praise of home-made chip pan chips

I loved chips when I was a kid.

I don't mean chip shop chips, which I loved quite a lot. I mean home-made chips, which I absolutely adored.

Home-made chips in the Sixties weren't any of your anemic, flaccid oven fries that come frozen in a bag nowadays.

Nope, these were proper chipped potatoes cut chunky or crinkled and deep-fried in a vat of golden boiling fat known as a chip pan.

The chip pan fat often contained the scraps from previous fryings and these scraps added to the overall tan and crunch of the chips' outer coat.

The perfect chip was a light russet tone and crispy on the outside and white and fluffy on the inside, A serving made a satisfying grating noise as it slid onto the plate from the pan sieve.

Chips could be seasoned according to taste and tradition. My favourite was lots of salt and vinegar. My Dad loved white pepper and salt and some folk liked Ketchup or Daddy's Sauce. Missus Moonbase ate mayonnaise with her chips, although these were fries bought at a vendor and not home-made.

Having not had a home-made chip since the Seventies my taste buds have succumbed to the lesser experience of the roasted oven chip, which is a poor sad substitute. I would probably have an out of body episode if I tasted real chips again!

Did you have home-made chips as a kid? If not chips at home, what potato food did you like? 

moonbase attic mess up

The Moonbase attic used to be the nerve centre of an international vintage toy mail order operation.

Look at it now!

A vintage mess of classic proportions!

Have you got a toy mess?

me toos; chocolate knockoffs or genuine treats?

Do you like me toos in the food world?

These are copies of brands. I suppose they're knockoffs really. They're everywhere now as all the UK stores, probably worldwide, try to replicate the success of known brands with cheaper versions as as happened in the world of toys we know so well.

I eat a lot of me toos.

Just had a chocolate bar called Caramel and Biscuit by Mister Choc from Aldi. OK it won't win any prizes for snappy titles but its a fabulous attempt at a Twix. In fact I would say its even better tasting than a Twix!

Another classic Aldi doppolganger is Titan. Its a Mars Bar lookalike and the black wrapper with huge red lettering says it all. It even tastes like a Mars and once again I think its better.

What do you think of me toos readers?

american toys at frankfurt toy fair 1963

http://www.britishpathe.com/video/american-toys-on-show-at-frankfurt/query/toy+rocket

courtesy of British Pathe.

front nacelles: is it rocket science?

These old Showa omake caught my eye.

On Yahoo Japan a while back they were probably released by Morinaga or similar.

What struck me where the pairs of forward nacelles on each small model.

These remind of the similar ones on the Project SWORD Probe Force 2.

Does anyone know the history or the science of these front nacelles in rocket design?

batman made me do it

Adam West began my love of Batman as a kid in the Sixties.

I got my bat toys from my kind parents back then.

I don't have any of them anymore worst luck.

Michael Keaton began my new love of Batman as an adult in 1989.

I bought my own bat toys then.

What I got in those bat-tastic first years of collecting in the early 90's you can see above. Its hard to explain how thrilling it was to get these toys as they were the very start of my vintage toy collecting. Everything was new to me and hugely exciting as only the start can be.

Thanks Adam RIP.

Thanks Michael.

Thanks Batman.

Hope you enjoyed Baturday readers.

adam west's classic batman opening animation 1966

rob t's batcave

Hi Woodsy,

I've had a few Batman Bits too.. one of my faves was this Keaton Standee... it looked great, wish i would have kept it now. I still have the Batman Returns stand part you can see in the pics, and a couple of the Games

Rob