Kevin As you’ve probably guessed at this point, I’ve gotten into the world of wacky and offbeat observances, and if you’re new here, you’ve probably noticed it by now. If not, just stick around and give it some time. We’ll make a wacky and offbeat observance convert outta you yet!
Today’s observance is none other than National French Fries Day. For those of you outside the U.S., they’re better known as chips, hot chips, or finger chips. According to the Wikipedia article, nobody really knows how French fries came to be, although there were references to what we now know as French fries dating back centuries. The article mentions how Thomas Jefferson requested them for a White House dinner in 1802, so they were definitely a thing for some time before then.
Today, French fries and their variations are more or less a staple in a lot of people’s mealtime selections here in the U.S. They show up on menus at restaurants, sometimes even the restaurants considered “ethnic.”
True story: I actually saw one of those build-your-own stir fry restaurants list French fries on their kids’ menu this one time. It’s a place I don’t get a chance to go by that often, but I walked by it a few weeks ago when I had the chance to go that direction. However, there’s a couple things I’m in dire need of in stores out by that restaurant, so I may have to check it out, and see what those fries are like. Are they seasoned, or just plain ones like we’d find at other places?
As a kid, restaurants were the norm in my house instead of the treat they should’ve been, and have become for me now. Everything I got from those places, the side was fries, and that was the only option in most places. Super-sized, of course. At one point, one of those places even had on offer a “bucket” of fries, which I think was probably about the size of one of those containers that some restaurants offering cups or bowls of soup use for the bowl option, but not as tall, if that makes sense.
Yes, that bucket of fries did make an appearance on our typical orders at this particular restaurant while it lasted on their menu.
In high school, I went vegetarian, and shock of shocks, I fell into the common fries rut. That carried over into college, when I went vegan for awhile, and also during my first go-round in losing weight.
In the years that followed that whole mess, which I’ve talked about here before, fries and their variations were common at my house. Cheesy fries, nacho fries, you name it.
Fast forward to late 2017, when I came to the realization that something had to change. Like I’ve talked about here before, I was healthy in terms of the metabolic testing and whatever. I’m in my early 30s, and I knew it would only be a matter of time before my luck ran out in that department.
That was when I was watching My 600lb Life almost religiously when it made its’ way to the janky free sites of ill-repute. You know, the ones that basically cause computer AIDS without the ad blockers. I came up with the idea to try out Dr. Nowzaradan’s diet plan, or what’s attributed to him in the Google searches for it, and see what happens. I noticed that it eliminates fries as part of the diet.
Understandably so. At the mass quantities I would eat them, it’s no surprise I ended up as bad off as I was. This isn’t to say that fries were the sole contributor to my weight problems, because they weren’t.
At the time I started losing the weight, I was bummed that fries weren’t part of my diet plan. As I moved forward toward where I wanted to be, I slowly started reintroducing them. Giving ’em up wasn’t forever. Instead it was a moratorium until I learned what a portion size actually looked like.
Eventually I went back to making the whole bag at once, in the oven with a lightly oiled cookie sheet.
Only this time around, instead of the whole bag as a meal, and when I say bag, I’m talking about the size of the ones like the Zesty Straight fries on the left in the pic above, I’ll have a small amount of them as part of my meal instead.
Before I lost the weight, it wasn’t out of the norm for me to bring the whole cookie sheet into my room and eat them straight off of it, after I added the fixin’s and filled up sauce cups for ’em.
Now instead of the whole pan at once, it’s now a whole pan as part of meal-prepping for me. In fact, I’ve got a bag of the fast-food style fries knocking around in the freezer, and I’m sick of looking at it. I won’t have time to make ’em today, but I’ll probably make ’em tomorrow or later in the week, and use my customary buttload of the Cajun seasoning before they go into my meal-prep containers.
Over to you, readers. Got a favorite recipe for fries? Do you buy ’em in the bags, or hit up the restaurants to get your fry fix on instead? Sound off below, and let’s bounce fry recipe ideas around while we’re at it.
