The writer celebrates their upcoming birthday by spending the day in the kitchen, specifically trying to make homemade potato chips. They express their love for plain Lay's chips and decide to recreate them using a simple recipe with three ingredients: potatoes, salt, and oil. After slicing and soaking the potatoes, they deep-fry them in a pan and season with salt. The writer then conducts a blind taste test with their girlfriend, Jenna, to see if she can tell the difference between the homemade chips and store-bought ones. The results show that the homemade chips are delicious and taste fresh, although they don't perfectly replicate Lay's classic chips. The writer concludes that making chips at home is easy and fun, and they encourage their audience to try it out.
Here are the key facts from the text:
1. The narrator has spent all day in the kitchen.
2. The narrator's birthday is coming up.
3. The narrator loves eating potato chips, specifically Lay's classic chips.
4. The narrator has never made potato chips before but wants to try.
5. The narrator bought a bag of russet potatoes to make the chips.
6. The narrator used a mandolin to slice the potatoes very thin.
7. The sliced potatoes were soaked in a cold saltwater bath for around 17-20 minutes.
8. The potatoes were then dried with paper towels before being deep-fried in oil.
9. The narrator used a popcorn kernel to test when the oil was hot enough to fry the potatoes.
10. The narrator made two batches of chips, one that was soaked for 17 minutes and another that was soaked for a longer time.
11. The narrator's girlfriend, Jenna, helped with a blind taste test to see if she could tell the difference between the homemade chips and store-bought chips.
12. The narrator received a new executive chef uniform as a gift from Jenna.
13. The narrator's kitchen is called the Ares kitchen.