Potato Chips from the Wood Cookstove

Published in The Christian Science Monitor

            I used my French chef’s knife as if it were hinged to the wooden cutting board at its point and cut slices almost thin enough to see through. One potato, two potato, three potato, four.

            I wiped the hot top of our wood-fired cook stove clean and put thin slices of potato down on the stove. The top of the stove was so hot, the slices seared dry instantly and did not stick. I picked up a spatula and turned potato slices.. As soon as I’d turned all the slices, I started at the beginning and removed the cooked, crisp, browned circles to a plate and informed my family, “Hot potato chips, right now.”

            Four of us gathered, and we emptied the plate almost as rapidly as I filled it a moment before. Juniper said, “Make more,” and everyone voted, “Yes. Do,” so the French chef’s knife flashed again in winter sun shining over deep snow on the meadow and into the big south kitchen window. I’m sure this is how potato chips began, and one of our rewards for having a wood-fired cookstove was our salt-free, oil-free, delicious, hot potato chips whenever we wanted them.

            All winter, whatever else the kitchen stove was doing, it kept the kitchen of the old, heat-leaking house warm in our Northeastern Oregon mountain valley where 40 degrees below zero was not uncommon. And all winter, it was available whenever anyone thought of it and said, “How about hot potato chips?”

            And we stood around the stove or sat at the kitchen table while snow fell or the sun shone or the moon shone, and we ate potato chips almost as fast as we could cook them.