We children usually had home made chips at least once a week; much less frequently we had the great treat of home made crisps. A rare treat because they were that much more fiddly to prepare, but also because they needed to be cut from early-ish potatoes, ones that were not too big to be cut into circles of the right size, about the thickness of a half crown coin.
After being thoroughly scrubbed of mud the potatoes were peeled & sliced, rinsed & carefully dried on a tea towel. The chip pan was heated up, the crisps put into the basket & fried – a process which took only minutes. The basket was lifted out, shaken, then any remaining fat on the surface mopped up some more on a sheet of newspaper.
Sometimes, just to add to the authenticity of the experience, we ate them out of cone-shaped bags fashioned out of a sheet of newspaper, a larger version of those small ones made from white paper which contained our weekly ration of two ounces of sweets.
No salt was usually added, or needed, for flavour.
As an older child I was hugely disappointed when, at a special hotel lunch, I discovered that game chips, which sound so sophisticated, are nothing but crisps made like mother used to make.
