Canada's Potato Heartland - Results

I've put off confronting this for long enough. The time has finally come to offer some commentary on this highly disappointing poll.

So, I guess by now you are all aware that Taber edged out PEI with a total of 55% of the votes. PEI received 42%, and the University of Guelph received an embarrassing 1%.

I guess that one thing we can learn from this experiment is that the uneducated masses of the internet are frequently, if not always, wrong and that internet polls are not an accurate method for determining where Canada's potato heartland is. We know internet polls are not reliable because PEI is unquestionably Canada's potato heartland.

Sorry for wasting your time, everyone!

Canada's Potato Heartland: Poll

Everyone, it is of the utmost importance that you participate in this online poll to determine which of the following three places is considered to be Canada's Potato Heartland. The poll will close on April 1, so make your voices heard -- before it's too late!

Which of the following is the Potato Heartland of Canada?

Campbell's Everyday Gourmet Roasted Potato & Spring Leek

One thing I'm certain of in this crazy world is that I really like packaged soups (in limited flavours, it goes without saying). I really love those dry Knorr soups (in minestrone, broccoli, or potato-leek) and I also really like the Campbell's Garden Minestrone. Campbell's used to have a condensed minestrone, but they seem to have gotten rid of it. I also really liked those cartons of soup that Campbell's put out. They came in broccoli and potato & leek, and I think that maybe they were "Gardennay," which presumably is a division of Campbell's. Anyway, they were always really good, but also pretty expensive, so I would just wait until they went on sale. Even on sale they were pretty expensive, but they were also a lot better than the other soup options, so I would go for it.

Recently I have noticed that Campbell's changed their packaging for these soups. Now they're "Campbell's Everyday Gourmet" instead of "Gardennay." They're a lot brighter and modern, and part of me thinks they might be Andy Warhol-inspired. But the packaging works. Their line-up of carton soups looks appealing and hip.

This picture took me a really long time to make and didn't come out nearly as well as I had hoped for.

So I picked up a box of their Roasted Potato & Spring Leek, assuming it would be the exact same soup as before. But it isn't. I don't like it. And I think that what I don't like about it is the "gourmet" aspect. It takes like a bunch of Campbell's execs in charge of the soup division (I don't know if there are any other divisions at Campbell's) talking about how they need to make this soup more appealing, and that something that appeals to people is the word "gourmet," and that adding too much pepper to something is a way that one can achieve that "gourmet-taste." This soup literally just tastes like pepper.

But it also has a not very nice texture to it. Like, every once in a while you come across a chunk and you can't be certain if it's a piece of potato peel or a piece of leek or some stray piece of garbage that made it into the batch ... until you get it in your mouth and realize it's actually just a clump of pepper.

I am honestly getting so fed up with Campbell's these days. They're also gluten-free. I will not buy this soup again.

My hunger did I try to allay

With Campbell's Everyday Gourmet.

Dressed up pepper-garbage in a Warhol design

Unfortunately this soup is not suitable to dine. 

Stop screwing around, Campbell's, and bring back Gardennay!

Potato Water

That gross, milky water that's left over after cooking potatoes never would have occurred to me as being a food. But then I married someone who stores it and later drinks it. And it is disgusting. No one loves potatoes more than I do, but even I must draw the line somewhere. And frankly, that line is drawn long before potato water (it's drawn at scalloped potatoes).

As I found it.

It goes without saying that this is not a "food" I would ever consider eating. I thought I would write a post about it because M just saved herself a bowl after making mashed potatoes for Thanksgiving dinner, and I just had to deal with it. So I dealt with it like this:

"MAGDI'S GROSS
POTATO WATER
(Seriously, so gross)"

I mean, this actually isn't food -- it's food waste. And frankly, it's a waste of my time to even talk about it further. So. Gross.

Hello Muddah,

Hello Fadduh, 

All I got is

Potato Wadduh.

Armadillo Potatoes

This afternoon I read an article that someone posted on facebook about how you're eating food wrong. There was a picture of this delicious potato that looked like an armadillo. I was intrigued and needed to try it. I went out and bought potatoes. I tried it. And you know what? I'm not doing it wrong. I have been eating potatoes correctly my entire life. These armadillo potatoes weren't that great.

They ended up looking pretty good though, right?

Basically I just sliced them up as best I could while ensuring that each slice was still connected to the body of the potato at the bottom. Then I brushed them with olive oil because I got a free pastry brush on the street about a month ago. Then I sprinkled kosher salt on them (admittedly too much). And then I popped them into the oven for what felt like eternity, but was realistically more like an hour and a half, which is still way too much time to spend preparing a potato.

I think one of the reasons I didn't really like these potatoes (but don't get me wrong, I obviously still did really like them; they just weren't as good as pan-fried potatoes) is because I'm not all that crazy about olive oil. These potatoes might have been much better if I painted them with butter instead. I don't know. In the end they kind of just tasted like exactly what they are: potatoes painted with olive oil.

They also seriously took way too long.

Tonight I fashioned my potatoes like armadillos

Nothing relevant rhymes with "armadillos."

NB: I have labeled these potatoes as "Food I Have Tried But Would Not Try Again." Obviously I have so many more potatoes ahead of me in this life time. They just probably won't be these armadillo potatoes.

Potato Update (4)

These ovenroasted squashed nugget potatoes have helped make this year's reading break the best reading break ever! So far I've eaten them three times in as many days.

These are all leftovers from a dinner party!

It's hard to even articulate what potatoes like these mean to me. Everything about them is absolutely perfect and has everything I'm looking for in a good potato meal: they're nugget potatoes, which are always the best kind of potato; they're oven-roasted, which is one of the most consistently delicious methods of preparing potatoes; and there's a perfect balance between grease, crispiness, and seasoning.

And here's about one-third of the leftovers. Perfect lunch.

If nothing else, these potatoes have made the long trip home for reading break worth it.

"Dear Food Thoughtz:" Potato Metaphysics

Welcome to a very special edition of Dear Food Thoughtz.  This question was submitted by a valued reader over a month ago, but because the question demanded a more rigorous examination than I am capable of, I enlisted the help of my personal metaphysician, Midge Deak (pronounced deek).  Midge is a graduate student in philosophy, specializing in Stoic metaphysics.  She has recently solved the problem of identity and is very fond of buns.  As always, please direct all future inquiries to food.thoughtz@gmail.com.  If you require Midge's profound philosophical insights, please put "Philosophy Alert" or "Philosopher Needed" in the subject line. 

Dear Food Thoughtz,

These potatoes were baked, but are they really "baked potatoes"?

Dear Avid Reader, 

First of all, thank you for writing us and for showing an unprecedented interest in the metaphysics of (baked) potatoes. A wise (post-)hellenistic philosopher once said: "Man cannot live by bread alone." And it seems that you, dear reader, cannot live by the substance of potatoes alone; you are hungry for the Baked Potato, or in all probability, pure and unmixed Bakedness.

In order to establish whether a potato that has been baked is a "baked potato", the entity's potatohood and bakedness both ought to be thoroughly investigated. However, putting my own metaphysical interests aside, I will try to focus on your question instead. Namely, what makes a potato a baked potato? Whether any potato that has been baked is a "baked potato" or does "baked potato"-ness consist in something else than going through a structural transformation in an oven.

The question is especially interesting because we actually know of potato dishes that are prepared with the method of baking, but which are not called a (or several) baked potatoes. Examples of such a kind of a dish are "potato squashers", oven-fried potatoes, stuffed potatoes and potato casseroles such as the delicious Hungarian "rakott krumpli" or the less delicious French "tartiflette". 

In my opinion there are two factors that are crucial in a potato-dish naming process (or dish-naming processes in general). First, the different sources that a potato-dish can acquire its name from: (A) non-potato ingredients, e.g. cheesy potatoes (B) other processes of preparation, e.g. stuffed potatoes, (C) some random fantasy name, e.g. tartiflette. And second, the preferences of the potato-dish-baptist. The Baptist could choose a name based on either A, B or C depending on which characteristic of the potato dish she thinks to be the most relevant. If she thinks that the most essential part of a potato dish is that the dish in question has been stuffed, then she will name it a stuffed potato. She may have made this choice because she thinks that the ingredients constituting the stuffing are either made mostly of potato, or that they are not very interesting, at least not more interesting than the gracious act of stuffing. However, if the Baptist feels that the ancillary ingredients have a more crucial importance in defining the essence of the potato-dish in question than the method of preparation, she will name the potato dish with reference to the process involved in preparation. 

It has to be noted that the name-giving preparatory process also has to be chosen from all the different processes involved in the preparation. Baked potatoes are also often washed and scrubbed beforehand, nevertheless they are not called "washed potatoes" or "scrubbed potatoes" or "washed and scrubbed potatoes", or " washed and scrubbed then baked potatoes" even though this last one would be the most accurate description of the potato dish in question. A similar case can be made for naming based on ingredients. Prima facie, these characteristics of potato-dish-naming processes seem to suggest that the christening of a steaming plateful of solanum tuberosum is governed by the whimsical fancies of fallible humans, who just choose whatever name comes to their mind upon the consideration of the material components of the potato dish and its history. This suspicion is also confirmed by the existence of random fantasy names like tartiflette. 

Personally, I find this account of potato-dish naming highly unsatisfactory. Although most humans are stupid and easily influenced, with the attention span of a tired mosquito, I find it unbelievable that all human actions are dictated by the music of chance. I would like to believe that humans are the most evolved among all animals, and as such have a keen insight into the true nature of things. They see the very essence of things and conceives of them accordingly. Names given to entities reflect this acumen humans have into the nature of things. They aim to grasp the most essential feature of the entities they apply to. To give an example, oranges are called "oranges", because their most essential feature is their colour, which is orange, and tables are called "tables", because their most essential function is to function as a table. If we apply this reasoning to dish naming, we can see that the names of dishes also aim to reflect their true essence. A cheeseburger is essentially cheesy, a Caesar salad is essentially a salad, and a carrot cake is essentially constituted by carrots. In all cases the name reflects the true inner nature.

Based on these considerations, we can conclude that if a potato dish is called "baked potato" it must be a potato dish to which the process of preparation, i.e. baking, is essential. Thus, dear reader, if you ever find yourself asking whether a potato that you have eaten was a "baked potato" close your outer eyes, and focus the eye of your very soul (i.e. your intellect) on the true essential nature of the tuber you have just ingested. Soon you will find an answer.

More tuber musings can be found here.

Potato Update (3): Potato Round-Up

Here are a few pics I snapped of some of my recent potato meals. They are not in order of consumption.

I ordered these potatoes in a Hungarian restaurant in Toronto.  I initially went to try the cold cherry soup, but it seemed disgusting and wrong to eat that as a meal unto itself (I was right), so I ordered these fried potatoes as a warm-up. They were only okay. This type of potato is really common, but I can't quite put my finger on what's wrong with them.  I guess it's that the shell is maybe too crunchy? I don't know. They're definitely my least favourite "homefry."

Here are some panfried potatoes I made for myself. Obviously they were delicious, because just look at them. Sometimes I cut up the potatoes into little cubes and sometimes I leave them in these rounds. I typically leave them in the rounds when I am too lazy to cube them, but even though there's an extra step involved in cubing, I typically find it to be a faster process. Certainly the cooking time is a lot shorter.

Ho-ho! What a beaut! Obviously these potatoes were the best of them all. With a very small exception, I ate the entire pan.  They looked even better before I ate them because they had had more of an opportunity to brown up, and the onion wasn't so blindingly white. These might have been the best potatoes I have ever made.

These are some mashed potatoes that a Hungarian made for me, with a side of fried ham. Usually I have to add a tonne of butter to the mashed potatoes that I eat, but these were truly perfect: really fluffy and buttery.

Finally, here are some potatoes that were included as part of an all-day breakfast special. Even for me they were a bit too greasy. And the "all-day breakfast place" was running out of fried potatoes by 3 o'clock! How can that even be the case? Is there such a thing as an all-day breakfast without potatoes? How could any responsible business ever run out of them? I got the last few, but it was like half of a normal serving, and I wasn't even compensated with extra sausage!

"Dear Food Thoughtz:" Hamburger-Pizzas; Breakfast Ideas; & Attire Choices

Welcome to the very first installment of Dear Food Thoughtz, a free advice column where I do the thinking so you don't have to!  All relevant questions welcome.  Email: food.thoughtz@gmail.com

Dear foodthoughtz

Last night I ate pickles on a pizza. Don't freak out - hear me out. Everyone has heard of cheeseburger pizza before. All pizza chains - especially the grossest ones - have it. Who even orders it? It's just ground beef, tomatoes, and the addition of cheddar cheese to the mozzarella.

This cheeseburger pizza was different. It had the regular ground beef, tomatoes, cheddar. But it also had pickles, and mayo and mustard zigzagged all over it.

Foodthoughtz, this was the best pizza I've ever eaten. I can imagine what you're thinking, and let me just say I'm not thrilled about it either. Today I didn't do anything other than wander around aimlessly, crying, wearing tights as pants and wishing I had that pizza.

I need your tough love, foodthoughtz. Help me.

Sincerely,
Pining for pizza on the prairies

Dear PPP,

Thank you, first of all, for being the first to write in to Dear Food Thoughtz.  Your support does not go unnoticed.

Now onto the pizza!  I think I'm going to have some surprising advice for you: when it comes to pizza, as long as it doesn't have pineapples on it, just be true to yourself.  If a pizza with hamburger toppings is what you're into, then don't be ashamed!  Honestly, I'm not thrilled about the pickles -- and especially not since M admitted to once melting a block of cheese with old pickle juice in a microwave and then eating it. 

I am not sure why you were expecting tough love from me, or if you wanted me to forbid you to ever eat this pizza ever again.  The mythical hamburger-pizza is actually something I've spent a lot of time thinking about.  Not because I would ever eat one, but because I am fascinated by those who would.  I say "mythical" because we clearly have two very different ideas of what a hamburger-pizza entails.  I don't doubt that your pizza had hamburger-influenced toppings, but it's not, in my mind, a hamburger-pizza.  A hamburger-pizza must have literal hamburgers as toppings.  Pizza Hut came pretty close, but as far as I know, this pizza only exists as a photoshopped image and probably in real life in Japan:

Admittedly this would be really difficult to eat.  I've never understood the appeal of those novelty foods that are, like, 80 burgers stacked on top of each other and then someone eats all of them as one giant burger.  That is so disgusting.  When you bite into a burger, you should be able to get a piece of everything in your mouth at one single time.

Another option that I thought of last night was to have a hamburger baked into a pizza, like a calzone, only to wake up this morning and discover it already exists on the internet!  In a way it bothers me that it's a calzone and not an actual pizza, but this seems like a really practical way to bring these two worlds together.  I honestly don't understand why calzones always get so much hate--they seem delicious--but it's true that they are not pizzas.

Finally, a Burger King restaurant in Time's Square launched a pizzaburger which is probably one of the best fusions of these two foods I've seen because it maintains crucial characteristics of both foods.  It's in the shape of a pizza, but each slice is clearly a bun.  Inside, there's a hamburger patty topped with pepperoni and mozzarella.

So these, to me, are hamburger-pizzas.  You just ate, I don't know, a pizza.  There's nothing to stress out about.  It's definitely not as disgusting as a dessert pizza or a Hawaiian pizza or lord knows what else.  Own it.  I mean, really.  Sure, there are a lot of foods that I think are disgusting, and by extension, I think that the people who eat those foods are disgusting.  But at the end of the day, what Food Thoughtz is really about is acceptance.  Not accepting others for their food choices, but accepting yourself for your own.

Dear FoodThoughtZ advisor:

Could you please comment on what would be an appropriate breakfast to serve for:

    a 32-year old daughter who will eat anything,
    her 3-year old daughter who will eat everything,
    a 26-year old daughter who will eat buns, rice and potatoes,
    the last-named's friend who is a vegan,

all of whom are visiting for breakfast on December 23.

Dear Nameless,

I’m confused as to why you are asking this question at all seeing as you have already answered it: potatoes. 

At least this would be the answer if you had not neglected to mention that the 3 year-old daughter of the 32 year-old daughter does not in fact eat everything; she does not eat potatoes.  There is no reason to force the other guests to abide by her strict dietary needs, so I would still recommend pan-fried potatoes, perhaps with servings of fruit, toast, and yogurt on the side to appease your fickle guest.

Coffee, of course, is expected.

Also, you have the date wrong.  Two of the four will likely be there on the 23rd, but the other two will not be arriving until the morning of the 24th as part of a Christmas miracle.

 dear foodthoughtz

I am really confused. What are you wearing in this picture?

your sister

Dear Inquisitor,

First of all, I am going to assume that your sign off as “your sister” was meant as a ruse to trick me into addressing this response to “Dear Sister.”  It did not work.

To answer your question, it’s a dusty pink boyfriend-style women’s shirt from the Gap that I bought on sale in Spokane.  It’s weird that the style of shirt is called “the boyfriend” given that these shirts are so lesbian-y.  I'm wearing a charcoal-grey cardigan overtop, purchased at the Gap Factory Outlet Store in Toronto.

I assume this question was meant as an insult, but it fell flat because I love this shirt.  In the future, please limit yourself to food-related questions.

Review: What is going on in The Kitchn's "How to Bake a Potato: Three Easy Methods"?

Before we begin, I suggest all of you go and familiarize yourself with the text.  This gem was sent in by a loyal reader and has since become one of my favourite food-related posts on the entire internet.  I also want to point out that the post we will be looking at is "How to Bake a Potato: Three Easy Methods," not to be confused with "How to Bake a Potato in the Oven."

This article grabbed me from the very first line: "As long as there are a few potatoes in the pantry, I know that I have at least one option for dinner."  Let's give the author the benefit of the doubt and assume that "the pantry" she is referring to is her pantry, but a more general statement that gets the same idea across could be: "As long as there is food in the house, I know that I can eat it" or "As long as there is air in the atmosphere, I know that I can breathe it."  Like, of course you can eat those potatoes. And you have so many options (I covered a lot of them in my potato post), so don't just limit yourself to baked potatoes!

But she has limited herself to baked potatoes.  The purpose of the article is to educate the reader on all the different ways to bake a potato. There are three (and a half):

1) You can bake a potato in an oven.

1.5) Same idea, but this time wrap the potatoes in tinfoil (hot tip: before you put them in the oven)

2) You can "bake" a potato in the microwave.

3) You can bake a potato throughout the course of the entire day in a slow-cooker while you're at work instead of just coming home and using methods 1, 1.5, or 2.

For each method the author includes brief instructions for how you might go about baking that potato, but if you find yourself struggling with methods 1 and 1.5, don't worry: there's a whole separate post on how to bake a potato in the oven.

This article is obviously ridiculous because everyone already knows how to bake a potato.  Or, if they don't, they can probably figure it out.  I mean, the people who are going to want to bake a potato are already aware that baking a potato is something that can be done.  If you are aware of the possibility of baking a potato, then the only question you have to ask yourself is what item in your house is capable of baking something and go from there!  The other major drawback of this post is that it doesn't talk about any of the ways that you can experiment with baking a potato.  Potato squashers immediately come to mind, but she also overlooked simply slicing up potatoes in a pan and putting them in the oven.  The latter method is sometimes referred to as "roasting," but because I typically use the convection bake setting on the oven, I count it as baking a potato.

The world is a sad, bleak place, everyone.  If anyone is still confused, here's a helpful gif:

Step 1: Grab a potato from your pantry or from a bag on the floor
Step 2: Admire it on the counter for a minute. You might also puncture it
with a fork at this point.
Step 3: Make sure the oven is on.
Step 4: Put the potato in the oven.

A Long Over Overdue Potato Update (2)

In April, 2013 -- approximately one month after this blog went on summer vacation -- my ham sista came to visit me in Montréal and help move me back west.  Leading up to her arrive we talked a lot about all the potato feeding frenzies we were going to have. In the end, we only had one.

Maybe you're thinking, Wow. Only one potato feeding frenzy? That's pretty pathetic for someone who claims to really like potatoes. But you guys. They were delicious and I have no regrets about our culinary choices that week.

A more recent potato update would regrettably not exist because--would you believe it?--I've been in Toronto for three weeks now and I haven't bought potatoes once.

The Salad

I hate salads. There is no such thing as a salad that I might like. There are no varying gradations of acceptable salads. I hate all of them equally (except pasta salad. I hate that salad the most. More below). I hate everything about them. I hate hearing my mum say, "Mary, can you make the salad?" I hate watching Mary (it's always Mary) make the salad. I hate seeing the salad(s) brought out to the dinner table. I hate watching people serve salad with those archaic tools (just use tongs already! This should not be a two-hand affair!). I hate watching people move their lettuce around the plate to sop up the last bits of dressing. I hate seeing the leftover dressing in the fridge because it makes me feel like I live in a laboratory that's in the business of testing unhealthy stool samples.

There are so many different kinds of salad that it's almost useless to collect them all under the blanket term "salad." What would it mean for someone to tell you that they're having salad for dinner? It wouldn't mean anything. They might be eating any disgusting combination of food! Aside from being a grab-bag of mixed ingredients, salads don't really have that much in common. Of course there are the lettuce (or other leafy greens)-based salads, but then there are all those other kinds of salads. Like bean salads. Or cold pasta salads. Or cold, slimy, Oriental noodle salad. Or potato salad. "Salad" is just an arbitrary term thrown around recklessly and attached to any collection of solid food (ie. not a soup) that is served in a bowl. If these people were half as creative at coming up for names as they are in creating revolting culinary concoctions, I wouldn't be in the position of trying to tackle all of the varying kinds of salad in one rambling post. Sometimes I wonder if anyone cares about my welfare at all.

Before I get into all of the different bowl-foods that are wrongfully and lazily referred to as salads, let me address why salads perfectly encapsulate everything I hate about food. Even though there are infinite different kinds of salads, one thing they have in common (although this is not something that is exclusive to salads, so I don't think it can be considered a defining feature) is that they're mixed. Whenever I inevitably have to explain to someone why I don't eat certain foods, I typically fall back on the excuse that I don't like my food mixed or touching other foods. Anyone who knows me knows that this is not an accurate statement. I love borscht, I love apple pie, I love spaghetti bolognese--there's actually a whole multitude of mixed foods that I would count among my favourite meals. But--and here's where it might get a bit tricky to explain--the mixed foods that I like make sense as mixed foods (with the exception of borscht. I have no idea why I like borscht. I shouldn't, but oh my God, it's so delicious). All of these foods are perfected by their combination. I love plain pasta, but it only really shines when it's paired with a bolognese sauce (similarly, I love ground beef, but it's only perfected when combined with a tomato sauce). I love apple sauce, but it's really only at its best when it's in a pie shell. These foods make sense together because there are no jarring and contradictory sensations at play. They go together like Dick and Nicole in Tender is the Night: "He supposed many men meant no more than that when they said they were in love — not a wild submergence of soul, a dipping of all colors into an obscuring dye, such as his love for Nicole had been."

But salads are the exact opposite, and they're what I mean when I tell people that I hate mixed food. Those ingredients don't go together at all. There's too much forced combination of different textures, different liquid consistencies. There's no logic behind combining lettuce, feta cheese, olives, and tomatoes. Of course I've never tried a Greek salad, but I don't have to in order to know that there are at least three too many sensations going on there (technically four because I wouldn't eat any of those ingredients). Wait. How many ingredients are there in a Greek salad? Whatever the number, that's how many of them are totally unacceptable.

So, without any further ado, let's get this show on the road. What follows is by no means an exhaustive salad list; I've included only the salads that immediately come to mind and that I have likely observed first hand.

Green Salad: Of all the salads, this one is the least offensive to my logic of mixing because, it is my understanding, that it is just lettuce and a light dressing. But it also doesn't make any sense to me. Why bother with this salad? If eating that leaf of lettuce that one time has taught me anything, it's that lettuce has absolutely no purpose. It's not filling and the texture is unpleasant.



Caesar Salad: Caesar salads are everywhere, but it wasn't until part way through high school that I actually figured out what it is. What's all the fuss about? Why is this salad on every single menu? It sounds disgusting. Egg? Worcestershire sauce? I wonder if I ordered a Caesar salad but asked them to hold the lettuce, the egg, the olive oil, the lemon juice, the Worcestershire sauce, the garlic, and the pepper if they would just bring me two separate bowls of parmesan cheese and croutons. Because I could get on board with that kind of salad.

Greek Salad: Ever since someone first explained "dick cheese" to me in elementary school, I knew I would never eat Feta cheese. I'm pretty sure that's where it comes from. Have you ever met a Greek man? They're disgusting. But there are a lot of other problems with a Greek salad. Like the large portions of tomato that force you to acknowledge their presence in a way that small cubes of tomato never do. Or the olives. Did you know that I won't shop in a grocery store that has an open olive bar because they smell and look so disgusting that I can't bear to spend another second in their vicinity? (Take note, Extra Foods in Grand Forks).

Santa Fe Salad: I hate to break it to you, but this isn't a salad. It's a bowl of beans. I understand that it sounds a lot better to roll into a potluck and announce that you've brought a Santa Fe salad rather than "Oh hey, I just brought this bowl full of beans," but come on. Call a spade a spade.

Pasta Salad: Presumably "pasta salad" is a category unto itself, but the pasta salad I'm aware of is composed of cold cork-screw pasta and strawberries and, as such, is the most offensive salad of them all. This is exactly what I meant when I said that salad forces two things together that by no means should be. Look, I love pasta. No one loves pasta more than I do. And I love strawberries. They're the second best berry (after perfectly plump blueberries, obviously). But even though I love both of them, there's no way I would ever consider putting them in a bowl together and then adding God knows what else! Get out of here with your pasta salad! I am crying right now! I'm not just saying that as a figure of speech or for emphasis! I am actually crying because it's too much for me to take in.  Stop ruining everything I love in this world! You want your strawberries paired with something more substantial? Then eat them on a waffle or with an angel food cake or in a pie or as jam on toast, but for the love of God, leave pasta out of it!

Noodle Salad: The only good thing that can be said about this salad is that it doesn't try to incorporate summer fruits. This salad is probably so slimy and makes me shudder in the exact same way that I shuddered when my mum told me that one time she was swimming in the ocean and then when she got back on the boat and shined a flashlight into the water she had just been swimming in, it was full of eels.

Kale Salad: Wow, I bet you shop at a farmer's market. I bet you bought some fashionable tote bags just to do your farmer's market shopping. I bet you rub beets on those tote bags so that when someone asks why there's a purple stain on your tote bag, you can say, "Oh, this ol' stain? That's just a beet stain from all the beets I bought at the farmer's market. I always shop at the farmer's market because I like to support our local farmers." Now that I'm actually looking at this picture of a kale salad, it looks a lot like what the end result would be if I ate a salad and then threw it up into a bowl.

Coleslaw: I've never eaten coleslaw, and I never will. But one good thing that can be said about coleslaw is that at least it has a consistent texture. What is it? Just raw, grated cabbage, right? Maybe some grated carrots? At least everything is crunchy. So I'm more or less okay with this salad. Although I have a feeling that it's also customary to add some sort of creamy dressing to it, which of course I am strongly opposed to.


Potato Salad: One time, when I was about 12 years-old, I wandered into the kitchen on a summer's day. No one was home. And I was hungry. There was a bowl sitting on the counter. I didn't know what it was. I don't know why I was drawn to it. I would never try a mystery food and I don't know what was going through my head at the time. I think I must have thought it was something it was not. But I put a piece of it my mouth and was immediately seized by pure terror and disgust. I was entirely immobilized. I couldn't even spit it out right away. I just stood there, rooted to the ground by a kind of extreme horror that I had hitherto never experienced. It was potato salad. I just put potato salad in my mouth. I get so angry when people try to coax me into trying something new because their reasoning is always that even if I don't like it, it will all be over in a second. But they weren't there when I tried that potato salad. They don't know what it's like, and they'll never understand that while that terrible taste did only last a manner of seconds before I spat it out and rinsed my mouth, I have been haunted by that experience ever since. I can't even talk about all the reasons why potato salad is wrong. I just don't want to think about it anymore.

A second post on salads is soon to follow, and its contents may shock and appall you. Just like a pasta-strawberry salad should.

On the dinner table, the salad is ever-present

But its definition is marked by constant deferment.

If I say "salad," what comes to mind?

Lettuce? Tomato? Dressing? A hint of lemon rind?

There's no natural correlation between the word and the thing

And we're left with a problem that is fundamentally Derridian.  

So remember before you sit down to dine

The inevitable gap between the signifier and the sign.  

Potato Update

The other day I bought a bag of frozen hash browns and consumed it in an embarrassingly short period of time. I took several pictures to commemorate the occasion, but I am only posting a few because I worry that the only thing more embarrassing than eating that many frozen hash browns that quickly is taking 15 pictures of myself doing so and posting them on the internet.

This is the first picture I took. I look pretty at peace with the situation. I now
regret that I didn't take a series of pictures of myself struggling under the
burden of shame that was the inevitable result of this potato feast.

And then I found out that you can take a series of four pictures in sequence,
so of course I took 13 more.

I meant for this post to be a warning to anyone who has ever idealized a certain food from their past, as I have with McCain's frozen hash browns. I was going to write about how sometimes you remember something being so delicious, but when you revisit it, you're kind of disappointed. I was going to write about how it's easy to conflate these foods with past emotional states, and why it's wrong to think that eating a food from your childhood--a time in your life that you typically associate with happiness--will ever be able to fill that void that has been steadily growing since those first tinges of adulthood. But now that I am looking at this mound of hash browns, I kind of just want to go out and do the whole thing over again.

The Potato

When I first heard about the Irish Potato Famine I was shocked. Not because I felt bad for all the Irish that had starved to death, but because I believed that it referred to a time in Irish history when all they had to eat were potatoes. It’s not that I didn’t know the definition of the word “famine,” it’s just that potatoes have always played such a major role in my culinary adventures that I couldn’t possibly conceive of a world in which potatoes were not present. I thought that there was no other food available in Ireland except potatoes, so naturally I was angry that that Irish were whining about only being able to eat potatoes--a dream come true, for some of us. And I’m still angry about the Irish Potato Famine, although I have since switched my focus away from the Irish and towards agricultural injustice. I believe this is also the time when I stopped believing in the infinite goodness of Mother Nature--the only religious upbringing I had ever had*--and started to hate this cruel world we live in.

I was similarly shocked to learn that the potato was not native to Europe and that somehow Europe managed to not only exist, but thrive as a colonial and military force, prior to the introduction of the potato. Naturally, Sir Walter Raleigh is my hero; partially for writing the most beautiful examples of Elizabethan verse but primarily for the central role in played in getting all of Europe addicted to and dependent on tobacco and potatoes. (Incidentally, Raleigh busied himself with searching for El Dorado--which he found in the potato, and is probably why we called the most delicious potato of them all the Yukon Gold. Or else it has something to do with the gold rush. Or something else entirely. I can’t be bothered to do the research**)

I can’t stress enough just how important potatoes are to me and how much I love them. As someone who once ate over 30 potatoes in less than 24 hours, it would be impossible to cover all of the subtle nuances of my passion in one blanket post, so I have opted instead to divide it up into several categories which will cover my favourite ways to prepare a potato and my favourite kinds of potatoes. This post will inevitably fail and communicating my undying affection for the Über Tuber, but here it goes:

Boiled Potatoes:

Boiled potatoes are probably my least favourite potato dish, but I would never turn them down. The only excuse for boiling potatoes instead of mashing, frying, or baking them is if you have managed to get your hands on some perfect little baby-nugs, which are sweet enough on their own that they don’t require further seasoning or attention. It can be a good ideal to boil several in advance and then store them in the fridge for one of those rainy days when you’re desperate for fried potatoes but can be bothered to put in the time. Pre-cooked potatoes (and this goes for baked potatoes as well) fry up so much more quickly and so much more nicely than un-cooked potatoes.

Baked Potatoes:

Again, not my first choice for a potato dinner, but sometimes a pleasant surprise. One of the best things to do with a baked potato is immediately cut a slit in the top and slip in a generous pad of butter and then seal it up again so that it not only butters up the inside, but the butter will inevitably melt and drizzle down the skin as well. Tearing off the tinfoil is like unwrapping a precious present that you already know you’re going to enjoy, even before it’s out of its packaging.

Potato Squashers:

My sister discovered this recipe in a vegan cookbook, but if you’re as violently opposed to a vegan lifestyle and all that implies as I am, you can easily rectify its flawed vegan nature by adding copious amounts of butter to these already well-oiled treasures. They differ little from a baked potato except that you slather them in oil and salt and, once they are partially cooked, you take them out of the oven and squash them down in to little cakes.

Hash Browns: 

There are various different kinds of hash browns, and I will try to do justice to them all below:

This plate of shredded hash browns (courtesy
of Washington state) was the first of many
enjoyed at the hospitable road-side diners
that dot the American countryside. I know I
said in the introduction to this blog that it's
really stupid to assume that by eating a
particular culture's food, you are somehow
injecting yourself into that culture and gathering
a greater appreciation for that culture than you
otherwise would, but I am pretty sure that this
is the one exception: eating at American road-
side diners really does give you a greater under-
standing of that culture.

    Shredded Hash Browns: 

These are the kinds of hash browns you will typically get at roadside diners when on an elaborate road trip with your sister to the southern US or after a night of crinking at Denny’s. They don’t really taste or resemble a potato in any way, and sometimes I suspect they are nothing more than solidified oil. If you add enough salt to them, they will taste just like oil and salt. So why don’t I just drink a bowl of oil and salt, you might be asking yourself. Because I want the substance of the potato to back it up.

    McCain’s Frozen Diced Hash Browns: 

Ever since discovering you can buy frozen fries for $2 and justify eating them for dinner, I haven’t really indulged in diced hash browns as much as I used to. But now that I have just reminded myself about them, I might go out and get them for breakfast tomorrow. And for lunch. And also for dinner. Because they are delicious. A few years ago it was not uncommon for me to devour a whole bag in one day.

    McCain’s Frozen Hash Brown Patties: 

For the business woman on the go, these make a perfect breakfast snack. But as I am neither a business woman nor do I ever have anywhere to go, I never eat these. I always forget that McDonalds makes a hash brown slab. Perhaps I should investigate further. Tomorrow.

    Left-Overs from Last Night’s Baked Potatoes: 

These are the best hash browns you can get in your own house. What makes baked potato hash browns so much better than boiled potato hash browns is that with the baked potato variety, the flesh pulls away from the skin a lot more and therefore has the opportunity to fry as well. Sometimes I will pull the skin off of the flesh and eat it as a crispy accompaniment to the main dish and sometimes I will put the whole round in my mouth as one and revel in the two complementary consistencies.

    Home Fries: 

Because I adhere to such a strict diet, I typically
only ever order side-dishes when I go out for
breakfast, and usually those sides are
disappointingly small. But this Victoria eatery
really understood and catered to my specific
needs with this massive plate of delicious
home-fried potatoes.

Technically you could make these in your home, but I would never use the term “home fries” to refer to hash browns I cooked myself. Now that I think of it, would never refer to home-made potatoes as “hash browns,” but rather as “pan-fried potatoes.” Huh. Anyway, if you see these listed on a menu along with hash browns, always go for the home fries. While restaurant hash browns will often be frozen and from a bag, home fries refers specifically to partially pre-cooked potatoes, and so they tend to be much more rewarding. Although they probably are also frozen and come from a bag.

Pan-Fried Potatoes: 

It seems unnecessary to mention that this is my favourite kind of potato, because anyone whose favourite way to prepare a potato isn’t pan-fried is a culinarily-inept clod with an unrefined palate.  While I have always loved pan-fried potatoes, I only recently started enjoying them with onion and garlic, and thanks to a particularly intrepid culinary adventurer, kolbasz.

Mashed Potatoes: 

Once I saw my mum make mashed potatoes and I nearly threw up in my mouth. I initially refused to eat them after I found out that there is so much milk in there, but I soon lost heart once they were put in front of me. Interestingly, mashed potatoes is one of the few dishes that, while I know how it’s made and don’t approve of it, I will eat regardless because it is so overwhelmingly delicious. There are several foods that I have been tricked into eating in the past, only to discover later that there is a certain ingredient or a certain way of preparing it that I am strongly opposed to, and I will no longer eat it even though I previously enjoyed it in a state of Eden-esque ignorance. A good example of this is the time that my sister made muffins with carrots or cauliflower or zucchini--or some other ridiculous ingredient that has no place in a muffin--and even though I gobbled up several of them and enjoyed them immensely, I was no longer able to eat them once I found out what had gone into them. One time someone made a large portion of mashed potatoes with garlic (and maybe green onion?) and they were delicious.

Fries:

One of the rules in Michael Pollan's grossly unhelpful Food Rules is that you should not eat what you are not willing to make at home, and cites fries as an example. First of all, Michael Pollan, I make approximately 1kg of fries per day (admittedly these come from a bag. Julienne style is the best, and while I do like McCain's, I actually prefer the No-Name brand fries because they're greasier), and still I am fat and still I am unhealthy. And secondly, no person in their right mind has the time or patience to actually make fries from scratch. Fries are best enjoyed either in a restaurant (in a pinch, from McDonalds) or from the fry truck that I can now only ever find at the Rock Creek Fall Fair (even though you used to be able to find it parked in front of what used to be Badger Books in downtown Grand Forks), with a healthy dosing of malt vinegar and salt. I can't even talk about this anymore because it's 20:30, and I know that if I got on a bus right now I could be eating fries within the hour.

Scalloped Potatoes: 

I don’t know what scalloped potatoes are, but I do know I won’t eat them.

B-Pupp dinner. Please note how the two different foods are
not touching each other--even though I love both of them--
and that I have inadvertently arranged my potatoes
by colour and size.

Types of Potatoes: 

 

Nugget Potatoes:

Is there anything you can't do with a nugget potato?! Whether boiling, baking, or pan frying, nugget potatoes are always your best bet. Because mashed potatoes are flavoured with milk and butter and, uhh, mashed, it would not be wise to shell out for nugget potatoes in this instance.
I have had two particularly pleasurable encounters with nugget potatoes which stand out in my mind. The first was in Arles, France. They were roasted beneath rotisserie chickens and all the grease from the meat dripped down onto the potatoes. I don't like chicken, I don't like chicken grease, and I would never knowingly order potatoes saturated in chicken grease ever again, but I am glad that I got to experience this at least once in my life. The second memorable instance was in Medellin, Colombia. Otherwise an unpleasant city, Medellin was crawling with nugget potato venders on the streets. For less than $1, you could buy yourself a little bag of heaven.

Yukon Gold:

A few years ago I would have said that Yukon Golds are the best potatoes on the market, but recently I have been kind of let down. I don't know if the Quebecois just can't grow a good potato or if the Yukon Gold is better as a baked potato (which I never make myself) rather than pan-fried. I typically only go for the white and thin-skinned potatoes now.

Russet Potatoes:

Russet potatoes are only acceptable when there are no other potatoes to be found. And since it seems unlikely that you would not be able to pick up some Yukon Gold, some out of season nugs, or, God help you, even red skinned potatoes, there is no reason to ever go for the russet.

Purple Potatoes:

There are two different kinds of purple potatoes. One is the potato with purple skin but white/yellow flesh and can usually be found in a mixed pack (along with white and red) from Costco, and they are as delicious as they are beautiful. The other kind is the potato with purple skin and purple flesh. I have never eaten these, because the one time my mum did buy them (after seeing them featured on Martha Strewart), and their subsequent boiling gave me such an insufferable headache that I could not bring myself to try them. But also, I don't think that food should be purple--this goes for carrots, too. Once you have become accustomed to how a certain food looks, it is unfair to be forcefully confronted with the same food but with a different appearance.

Finger Potatoes:

Finger potatoes, while as delicious as nugs, are longer and usually can't be consumed in one bite. One of the principle pleasures of nugget potatoes is that you can pop the whole thing in your mouth.

* When asked about God and if we believed in God, my mother always responded, no, we do not believe in God; we believe in Mother Nature. 

** I was bothered to do the research after all. It might shock you to learn that the Yukon Gold variety was not developed until the 1960s. It might further shock you, but probably won’t, that it was not named for Raleigh’s search for El Dorado, but for the Yukon River.

 

Come live with my and by my love,
And we will all the pleasures prove
Of the hills and valleys, dale and field,
And of the yearly potato yield.

There will we sit upon the rocks,
And gaze upon our unflagging potato crops,
The tuber we will always have on hand
(Unless we live in Ireland).

There I will make thee potatoes by the pan


--The favoured food of the Enlightened Man--


Or sometimes we will eat them mashed


By the bucket-full, and unabashed

A plate full of the finest nugs
(If we can ward off the potato bugs)
We’ll breakfast solely on hash brown,
So delicious to be worthy of the Crown

On lazy days, potatoes boiled
For our appetite is never spoiled
And if these pleasures may thee move,
Come live with me, and be my love.

In honour of Sir Walter Raleigh
We’ll name our home “Potato Valley”
Baked potatoes in a buttery sea
Prepared each day for thee and me

The potato each day our table adorning
For thy delight, night, noon, and morning
If these delights thy mind may move,
Then live with me and by my love.