Balsamic Vinegar of Modena Kettle Chips

Brand: Kettle

Cost: £0.90

Found at: Sainsbury’s

Being ladies of great refinement and taste, cruelly underfinanced for the lavish lifestyle to which we wish we could become accustomed, several female classmates and I took decided to visit Pollok house for the weekend to bask in a state of refinement. The house itself is a lavish Edwardian country home that overlooks an estate that supports a healthy population of golfers – a colony, I assume, that has been artificially introduced for the sake of the view. Over the course of a rainy Saturday, the four of us teased the art, lounged on the furniture, giggled through the library, and chased after the highland cows that were cowering in a field opposite the golf course.

Sitting under a tree in a small grove that was once the quiet escape of some member of the Scottish landed gentry, we ate chips and discussed the horror such a gentleman might feel at seeing his house overrun by the dissipate descendants of the staff. None of us felt that sorry for him, but in his honor, we pulled out the package of the good chips. The scripted handwriting on the vivid blue bag seemed to lend the correct gravitas to the proceedings – after all, these were not just any salt-and-vinegar potato chips: these were made with basaltic vinegar and they were all-natural. In fairness, they were not quite as tangy and salty as your typical, all-artificial salt-and-vinegar of the proletariat (which I have to admit I prefer) but they were still wonderfully tangy and crunchy and they let us extend the illusion just that little bit longer.  Soon enough we would go back to our dorm rooms, IKEA furniture, and Lays potato chips – but for another hour or so we could pretend that we were the kind of people who had country homes, toured the grounds, and ate expensive potato chips.