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.

Pasta - Part I: An Introduction

Dear readers, you might be in for a long haul on this one.  One of the good things about being a picky eater is that on top of avoiding a bunch of really disgusting foods, you will likely become really passionate about the food you do like.  Pasta is one such food for me, and you guys, I really love pasta. 

Probably more than any other food type, pasta has remained the most reliable across time.  I’ve made similar statements about rice and potatoes—both of which are major staples in my diet—but neither have proven to be as consistently delicious or trustworthy throughout my life has pasta has been.  When we would go out for dinner to a restaurant when I was younger, plain pasta with butter was almost always not only a viable option, but one that I took extreme relish in.  There has only been one exception at the Sheraton Hotel in Spokane in which I didn’t get the pasta dish I expected (I touched on it briefly in a Dear Food Thoughtz post), but I see no reason for rehashing that one particular anomaly again here.  As I grew older and as my tastes evolved into the perfected and crystalline state they are today, I began to experiment first with plain tomato sauce and later with bolognese.  Actually, now that I think of it, there was a second incident in which I accidentally ordered a pesto lasagna not realizing what it was, but I take full responsibility for that mistake, and because it was a lasagna, it’s beyond the scope of my present purposes.
You know, I’ve always thought that the Catholic belief in transubstantiation was a bit farfetched, but I’ll be damned if pasta doesn’t transform into something divine when cooked.  Is there a more convenient food on this earth?!  It can be stored forever in its dry form,* but boils into perfectly soft and starchy entity in a short period of time (much shorter than rice, which shares the same storage benefits, although for some reason I always think a mouse will get in there).

  Its quick prep time and long shelf life make it perfect for round-the-clock feasts.  For whatever reason, I have a really hard time measuring pasta quantity, but it ultimately doesn't matter because if you cook too much you'll eat it anyway because it's delicious, and if you cook too little it only takes about 5 minutes to make another batch.

Another great benefit to pasta is that the possibilities of different pasta shapes is limited only by man’s imagination.  To help alleviate the pressure of choosing the best pasta shape, I have compiled a non-exhaustive list of some of my favourites (as well as some of my least favourites), followed by a brief brand sampling and some of the ways that contemporary health crazes have sought to degrade this noble food.  This post has been divided into three parts because it ended up being approximately 4,000 words.

*Here's a fun fact about me.  When I took the Food Safe course offered at Selkirk College in Grand Forks, I scored about 99% on the exam.  The instructor went over the exams and explained any of the questions that people got wrong.  And then she came to the one question that I got wrong, which was a multiple choice question about what food poses the greatest risk when raw.  The possible answers were things like meat, vegetables, fruit, whatever.  But pasta was also an option, and it was the option I selected.  My reasoning was that everyone knows that raw meat can be dangerous, but no one would suspect it from pasta.  So I actually selected pasta, and I got it wrong.  The instructor wasn't even willing to go over that question for the class because she assumed someone had just accidentally circled the wrong answer. 

Pasta - Part II: Different Types of Pasta

Spaghetti: Spaghetti is what most of us have in mind when we think of pasta, and with good reason.  It’s quick to cook and it provides an excellent base for sauces.  Wrapping it around a fork is both fun and challenging.  Although it lacks some of the qualities of other pastas, such as crevices for storing sauce of cheese, it more than makes up for this because not only can you often trap sauce or cheese between the layers of pasta as you wind it around the fork, but because you never have to grab the pasta with the tines themselves, they're left free to pick up meat clumps.  Spaghetti provides a great opportunity to choose your own pasta-sauce ratio. 

Vermicelli: Some of you might find this hard to believe, but there was a time in my life when I wasn’t willing to eat spaghetti and would only eat vermicelli.  I’m not sure what I was thinking, but I guess I thought that spaghetti was too thick and too dense—essentially that it was too much pasta.  It’s really strange to realize that I thought this way because it’s not like I was pairing it with anything else at the time except maybe some parmesan cheese. 

Spaghettini: But then things got even worse when I went down another size to spaghettini.  Have you ever eaten spaghettini?  It’s really skinny, but I used to love it.  And then one day my mum overcooked it into a big mushy blob and it made me so sick that not only could I not eat it at that point, but I would never be able to eat it again.  I love having spaghetti bolognese, but I honestly have no idea what it would be like with spaghettini because I can’t go near that pasta again.  Overcooked pasta is bad at the best of times, but when you’re cooking a pasta as fine as spaghettini, you really must remain vigilant because if it’s overcooked, you might as well put it straight into the garbage.

Fettuccine / Linguine: I have no use for this pasta.  I can’t figure out why certain dishes require this type of noodle, but I don’t eat those dishes and I can’t imagine how this pasta could benefit me.  I don’t know anything about the history of pasta, but these noodles have always seemed like a totally unnecessary evolution of spaghetti.  Like one day a group of people were sitting around together and one of them said, “You know what would make spaghetti even better?  Flattening it!”  And everyone became really enthusiastic because it did seem like a good idea, but once it was done, no one could figure out how exactly it had improved on anything at all and eventually it was relegated to the sea food dishes because the only person stupid enough to eat sea food (in general, but here specifically with pasta) is also stupid enough to think that there is a benefit to a flat noodle.

My life will never be any better than it was at this
precise moment.

Radiatori: I have tweeted about this pasta before, and I stand behind that tweet: radiator pasta is, hands down, my favourite kind of pasta.  There is no wrong way to eat this pasta.  If you have it plain with a little bit of butter, it’s going to be great because droplets of melted butter will melt into the folds so that when you bite down, it will squirt out into your mouth.  If you have it with just melted cheese, it’s also amazing for the same reason that the cheese will melt into the folds.  I don’t know how serious you guys are about melted cheese on hot foods, but it’s really important that the food that you’re melting the cheese onto is porous or has folds so that there’s somewhere for the cheese to go.  There’s nothing worse than investing a lot of energy into grating cheese only to have it end up as a lump at the bottom of the bowl.  But if you pick the right base food, that cheese will coat it and seep into it, and it will be the best thing you’ve ever had.  The same goes for bolognese sauce, although admittedly bolognese is the most forgiving.  Even with a pasta like spaghetti, which doesn’t have any pockets to hold butter/cheese/sauce, the sauce is still going to coat it.  And if you’re twirling it around  a fork then you can usually trap some of the sauce between the coils of pasta, so you really don’t have to worry too much about your sauce-to-pasta ratio.  The main benefit of radiator pasta over other forms is that because of their ruffled and folded edges, radiators typically manage to have the largest surface area, which means there’s more to be covered by sauce or cheese.  But it also means that it’s dense, yet airy.  This is probably the best quality a pasta can have, and one that is shared by rotelle, fusilli, and rotini.  Radiator is the best at achieving this delicate balance by far, and that is why it is my favourite pasta.

  
Rotelle / Wagon Wheels:  This is probably number two on my list after radiator.  I love this pasta and I don’t know why!  There is definitely something magnetic about it because one time my niece was eating them and accidentally dropped one on the floor.  She was just little girl and I don’t know how much floor-dirt babies can eat, so I sacrificed the noodle to the garbage.  But then she had a major meltdown and refused to eat anything else, and eventually I just took her out of her high chair.  The first thing she did when I turned my back was go straight to the garbage, fish out that one noodle (it was literally in a garbage can, sitting amongst garbage), and pop it into her mouth.  And then she just stopped crying.  I realized at that moment that although my niece and I have almost nothing in common (she won’t eat potatoes), there is a little bit of me in her because losing even one wagon wheel pasta is a huge tragedy and it’s definitely something that warrants a tantrum.  But what makes this pasta so much better than others?  I can’t say for sure, but I suspect it has something to do with its wheel shape (duh).  What I mean is that when you consider a wagon wheel and how the spokes are there to maintain the circular shape and ensure that the wheel doesn’t just collapse, then you’ll understand what’s so great about this pasta.  It’s really sturdy, but because it’s also soft pasta, you exercise so much power over it.  You can break it at will!  One of my favourite things to do is to push a full wheel up to my top front teeth, hold it in place, and then burst my tongue through the spokes.  Admittedly this pasta is not the best for sauce because there’s not much to hold onto, but it still works really well with butter or cheese.  Obviously all pasta is good with butter, but the shape of the wheels gives something for the cheese to melt onto and stick to.  Unlike something like penne, where the cheese typically just slips off, the various spokes provide the cheese something to hold onto.  If you’re really lucky the cheese might melt over the entire surface of the wheel so that you end up with something that resembles a drum.

I put zero effort into this one, but it was still a great excuse to remember that 2008 USA Sista Road Trip.

Conchiglie / Shell Pasta: There was a time in my life when I refused to believe that anything was better than shell pasta.  It was probably around 2007.  By then I had probably already had radiator and wagon wheel, but for some reason shell pasta was just really doing it for me.  Shell pasta has a lot of really great design features (actually it only has one, but it’s really great).  Because it’s shaped like a shell, it functions as a pocket  to catch whatever you drape over it—it’s like eating a spoonful of spoons, but the spoons are made of pasta and are edible.  One minor complaint about shell pasta is that it can sometimes be difficult to spear them with your fork, but it’s not difficult enough to stop you from enjoying this fine pasta.  Life is always placing obstacles in your way, and you just have to learn to overcome them.

Conchiglioni: For anyone who doesn’t know, conchiglioni are those giant shells that you’re supposed to stuff with something.  You probably can’t eat them plain, although I have thought about it.  I’ve thought about these giant shells a lot, actually.  Whenever I am in the pasta aisle I spend a lot of time staring at them and daring myself to buy them, but I haven’t taken the plunge yet.  I’m waiting for someone to stuff them with spaghetti sauce, grate some cheese on them, and pop them into the oven to bake. *cough*  Probably delicious, right?

Here is some penne that I ate one
time. It's totally smothered in cheese.
Perfect midnight snack.

Penne Rigate: Penne is a difficult pasta for me and I never really know how I feel about it.  One thing that I definitely do not like about penne is that it takes a lot longer to cook than any other pasta I typically eat.  The pay off, I suppose, is that penne is a lot meatier than other pastas so it makes sense that it takes so much longer to cook.  Penne is a perfectly acceptable pasta choice, but because there are better shapes out there, it’s not one I often go for.  If I do have penne, I typically have it plain with cheddar cheese because I don’t think it’s really a sauce pasta.  Because it’s a hollow tube it seems like there’s a lot of potential there to catch sauce or cheese, but it never really works out that way.  It should go without saying that the only penne worth eating is rigate.  I can’t imagine anyone ever opting for the smooth penne.
*NB. I didn't mention penne lisce because I can't imagine anyone even eats that. 

Macaroni: Macaroni is another kind of pasta that while I really like, I don’t actually eat very often.  It never seems worth buying macaroni because the shape just isn’t as good as other pastas.  I usually eat them as the pasta component to macaroni and cheese, but just because they’re the expected pasta to have in this dish, that shouldn’t stop you from experimenting with other forms, too.  Shell pasta is particularly good in macaroni and cheese, and I bet wagon wheel or radiator would be amazing as well.

Orzo: What the hell is orzo?  Rice-shaped pasta?  I hate it.  In general I’m not a big fan of mini-pasta (there are also tiny shells or those star-shaped things), but orzo is the absolute worst.  It’s like a bunch of slimy maggots and has neither the good qualities of rice nor of pasta.  One time I had to eat it and it felt like reverse-vomiting.  Maybe you’re thinking that all eating is reverse-vomiting, but this actually felt like someone recorded a video of me puking up rice and then played it in reverse.  It felt like watching that.

Fusilli: This is the most under-appreciated of all the pasta shapes that I eat.  I really love it, but for some reason I don’t buy it very often and I certainly don’t praise it as much as I should.  It has a lot of the same benefits as radiator pasta because it has a lot of surface area as well as nooks and crannies for sauce and cheese.  Radiator is better only because it has a more satisfying texture to it, partly because there’s more ridges to it, but also because for some reason it’s just better if it’s slightly undercooked.  For some reason I think this has to do with it being kind of a cube-shape, but I can’t justify that logic in anyway.

Rotini: This pasta is possibly slightly better than fusilli even though they are very similar in shape.  The benefit is that rotini is slightly tighter, so it’s denser to bite done on, but there’s enough space between the coils to give the pasta nice bounce.  Again, I don’t buy this pasta nearly as often as I should.

Farfalle / Bow Tie: I’m all for novelty-shaped pasta, but this just doesn’t do it for me.  It doesn’t have enough body to it.  It's like cutting a square from a sheet of lasagna noodles and twisting it.  The little gathering of pasta in the centre is the only thing that gives this pasta any sort of shape, and I hope that by now that you have realized that one of the most important qualities a pasta can have is good dimensions.  Farfalle just doesn't cut it, but I think I have seen it used in soup a few times, and that would probably be okay if you're into that kind of thing.  

Lumache / Snail-Shell: This is another pasta shape that I don’t have too much experience with, although I have nothing against it.  Now that I’m thinking of it, maybe I should buy a bag because it seems like this pasta merges the best qualities of macaroni with the best qualities of shell pasta.  They would probably make an excellent base for macaroni and cheese.  So if anyone is wondering what I want for my birthday (it’s coming up, or will be depending on when you’re reading this), you could get me a bag of lumache and I’ll try it out and get back to you.

Pasta art in Barcelona.

Lasagna Noodles: The only reason to eat this pasta is if you’re eating lasagna.  There’s no other way I’m going to cut my pasta with a knife.  Now might be a good time to mention that I absolutely hate it when people cut their spaghetti in half.  The same goes for people who break their spaghetti in half before cooking it.  I can’t even eat that garbage.  No one is more spoiled or coddled than me, but it takes a special kind of uselessness to only be able to eat spaghetti that has been halved.  You wrap it around your fork.  In hindsight, this note probably would have fit better under the spaghetti heading.

Tortellini: Olivieri tri-colour three-cheese tortellini is one of my major weaknesses.  I cannot exist in the same space as this pasta without eat it all up immediately.  Sometimes I am so full that I can’t move except to bring another forkful to my greedy mouth.  This pasta is delicious, especially when smothered in butter.  I went through a weird phase when I was really obsessed with grating parmesan on top of it, but I’ve since outgrown that and don’t like it at all anymore.  The orange colour is my favourite, but I had to find out the hard way that even though the green ones are my least favourite, if you remove all of the green ones, it really takes away from the overall experience.  I have never had any other form of tortellini and don’t even know if they exist.

Ravioli: I think I have had ravioli once in my life—in Italy (yes, Italy)—and it was fine, but ultimately unnecessary. 

Pasta - Part III: Brands, Alternatives, and Final Thoughtz

PASTA BRANDS:

Obviously there are numerous pasta brands out there, but here’s a small selection of what’s available.  These are the brands that I most often encounter.

Barilla: Even if barilla hadn’t made those weird anti-gay comments, they’re just not a very good pasta brand.  I haven’t bought this pasta very much in the past because it’s typically more expensive than other brands, but when I have, I’ve always had a hard time cooking it properly.  It seems to always be undercooked, and there is practically no window during which to extract the pasta at its perfect consistency.  And while I like the idea of pasta coming in the box, it usually find it to be more of a hassle than a bag.

Maybe it’s worth touching on the gay scandal that rocked Barilla in September 2013.  Essentially the Chairman stated that Barilla supports “traditional” families, and that if you disagree, then you can eat another brand of pasta.  And you know what?  If you disagree, you can just eat another brand of pasta.  It will probably help you to realize that Barilla does not produce a quality product.

De Cecco: This brand also comes in a box, but I still really like it.  I think the design is pretty good (Old Country, but not too Old Country).  I usually go for this pasta when I want to step up my game.

Catelli: Do not even talk to me about Catelli because I hate it.  Even if I didn’t hate it, it’s almost impossible to find a Catelli product that isn’t whole wheat or “smart pasta.”  I don’t know what the difference is between the two, but if there is one, I hate them both.

Primo: Of all the pasta brands, Primo is the one that I’ve probably eaten the most.  It’s cheap, most grocery stores carry it, and they’re usually the only brand that I can find in a generic grocery store that makes wagon wheels.

Italpasta: Italpasta has been my go-to brand recently.  It’s cheap and I think the quality is good.

PASTA DEGRADATIONS:

Look, if you can’t handle pasta, don’t eat it.  If it doesn’t feel good in your body, then maybe pasta is not for you.  If you feel guilty for eating pasta, then stop it.  But for the love of God, do not subject the rest of us whose digestive systems are tough enough to handle it to these revolting pasta-tweaks or pasta-alternatives.  Have you eaten whole wheat pasta?  It is disgusting.  It never cooks properly.  It’s brown.  That is not the pasta for me.  Brown rice pasta or black bean pasta, although I have never tried either, are similarly disgusting.  Is it even pasta?  I have no idea, but whatever it is, it’s clogging up my pasta aisle.  “Clogged aisles” is probably how you feel when you eat pasta, so stop doing it and stop searching for “healthy alternatives” that mimic pasta.

BOLOGNESE SAUCE:

I was originally planning to write a separate post for bolognese sauce, but because I’ve already mentioned it so many times throughout this post, it makes more sense to throw a little something together right now.
It’s hard to imagine that bolognese sauce is a fairly recent addition to my life.  I’m sure I had eaten it before, but I don’t remember getting serious about bolognese until that one time I was stranded in Ancona and there was nothing else to eat.  If you’re wondering whether it was particularly high-quality sauce because it was in Italy, the answer is no.  Italy, like anywhere else in the world, probably does have really good bolognese sauce, but I bet that what counts as “good bolognese” would be inedible for me because it probably includes fresh ingredients, and I can’t stand fresh ingredients in a sauce.  Bolognese sauce should always be made of canned crushed tomatoes and one small tin of tomato paste (do not consider getting any other form of tomato, such as diced or whole, because you’re going to have to puree them anyway, and you probably have a pretty cheap hand-blender that doesn’t puree very well, and you’re going to end up regretting your decision), the cheapest ground beef you can find (I always pretend that I like lean, but I actually like the regular ground beef because grease is so good in spaghetti sauce), one onion, some garlic, and then whatever spices might be available to you.  What I’m getting at is that the kind of spaghetti sauce I like is the sauce most readily available at fast-food stalls in ferry terminals in Ancona.  It is worth noting, however, that I have not limited myself to fast-food spaghetti bolognese.  Far from it, I actually orchestrated an elaborate marriage scheme in order to secure myself a life-time supply of spaghetti bolognese: I scoured the entire globe until I found the best bolognese chef alive today, and then I married them. (Boldog születésnapot, keleti szépségem.)

But it might be unfair to give Ancona full credit.  Previous to this experience in 2005, I had already started to get involved with baked lasagnas that were cooked with bolognese sauce and thankfully without ricotta cheese or bechamel sauce.  At that time--sometime during high school--I didn't consider the possibility of eating pasta with bolognese sauce.  It is typically the case with me that even though I like a certain kind of food in a certain kind of way, I am still unwilling to try that same food prepared in a slightly different way.  Even though lasagna should not be considered a direct cause of my later love of bolognese sauce, I think on some unconscious level it probably opened my mind to the possibility, and for that I am eternally grateful. 

Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?

Thou art more starchy and more satisfying.
Summer is an unknown, but come what may,
Thou are steadfast and always appetizing.
Beads of melted cheese on thine ridges shines
My love for thee has not once been dimmed
Come hither! Prick thyself on my fork tines
Sauce, cheese, and pasta: mine bowl hath brimmed!
My commitment to thee cannot be sway’d
When thou art absent I am at my low’st
Accept this sonnet as my love display’d
I hope the gesture will not go unnotic’d
So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,
So long lives thee, and thou give life to me.

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!

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.

Buns

Whichever asshole said that man can’t live by bread alone was a liar and an fool. You can. And I know because I have. When your diet is as restrictive as mine, you soon learn to take what you can get, and in a social setting, a hotel dining room, or on an airplane, that’s usually buns.

Of all the foods that I have wanted to discuss on this blog, buns never really crossed my mind as something warranting my time and energy. Before I get into it, I want to clarify that the only buns that will be discussed in this post are the small round buns that you can find in the Overwaitea bakery section and which are almost always present in either a basket or a bowl at large lunch/dinner events. They are also always served on planes and usually the only thing I will eat on such occasions. There are so many other buns--pizza buns (!!!), cinnamon buns, cheese buns, my niece’s rendition of Hot Crossed Buns--that will be saved for future posts.

So why buns? Why now? This post was specifically solicited by one of my avid readers, and I can only assume that she is so keen to know my opinion of buns because one time at a festive party at her house, I opted for a solo bun over a heaping pile of ham. No offense to the hosting family, but I always go for buns when I am at one of these casual gatherings where there’s a table of food and no rigorously controlled method for eating it. Of course, had it been a sit down meal with endless trays and dishes of food being passed around and around, I would have helped myself to some ham (and perhaps demanded a bowl of frozen peas), but in the words of a wise Hungarian scholar, the bun “is for small people always on the go.” By limiting myself to one bun, I maximized my mobility and therefore my sociability--a charm I am well known for.

Sally Lunn Bun.

In my post on rice, I wrote about how rice is one of those foods that is always there for you and that you don’t have to spend too much time thinking about. I kind of feel the same way about buns, except that I am also always a bit disappointed when I realise that I am going to have to eat a bun because there is nothing else to eat. On an airplane, for example, there is a 90% chance that the only part of the meal I am going to eat will be the bun. There have been times when I’ve really lucked out and they serve spaghetti bolognese, but it’s usually some sort of chicken curry (one time Air Canada even served fish and didn’t offer a vegetarian option! Or at least not to me) and it’s all so mixed up in that little dish that I can’t pick out a single thing. So when I look down and realise that all I’m going to be eating is that bun, I can’t help but feel a bit disappointed. That is until I break the bun open and spread one of those little pads of butter on it and eat it and remember how much I love eating buns with butter and wonder why I don’t do it all the time. I love eating anything with butter, but buns are especially good because the butter doesn’t melt so when you bite in, you will inevitably get a bit with a lot of semi-solid butter and it’s such a rush! You’re a bit disgusted with yourself because you’re just eating chunk of butter, but it’s also really hard to care because 1) it’s delicious and 2) you’re on a plane, and any disgusting behaviour goes on a plane.

Buns are a safe bet because you (almost) always know what you’re getting, but the other reason I am so dedicated to buns is in part to combat this rising fad of “gluten free.” I will be the first to admit that I don’t know what gluten is, but I do know that it’s found in breads and pastas--two of my favourite foods--and that it is becoming increasingly and annoyingly popular to be “free” of it. Some people claim that their bodies cannot tolerate gluten, and at the risk of sounding too much like a tyrannical monster, let me just say that if you are one of these people, then it is high time you asked yourself whether or not you truly belong in this world. I feel that it is my personal duty to do all that I can to ensure that gluten will always be in our diets by eating as much of it as possible and ensuring that there will always be a demand for it. I also know that I always associate gluten-free with vegans--an association that my singular vegan friend assures me is wrong and unfounded, but I am pretty sure is right and well-founded--and therefore feel that it is doubly crucial to lash out against this fad.

Because it is a fad. I know it is because signs advertising “gluten-free” food are becoming a more and more prevalent marker on the Vancouver landscape. Whenever something becomes popular in Vancouver, the fad either originated there and you immediately know that it’s stupid and that you will do well to avoid it (Lululemon; those stand-up paddleboards) or that it has come there to die (coffee culture; indie music; speciality beers) and it’s time to jump ship. And I also know that it’s a fad because, okay, whatever, maybe there are some people on this planet who can’t handle gluten, but there certainly are not enough to warrant the veritable plethora of menus catering to a gluten-free diet along Commercial (or “The Drive,” as I like to call it), or the gluten-free beer (there is a Montreal beer called Glutenberg, which is a really unfortunate waste of a great name), or the new gluten-free Rice Crispies. The worst part about these dietary fads is that they are always accompanied by the shaming of those who do not adhere to their bizarre and arbitrary rules, so now I am put in this weird position where I can’t help but feel bad (not guilty, but actually bad, as if I have some kind of defect) that my body can tolerate gluten. Is there a reason why I should be envious of people who can’t tolerate gluten?

Here is a picture of me at the social gathering in question. I think I will use
it again when I inevitably write about prunes because that's what my face
looks like. You might have noticed, as I just did, that there is a jar of salsa
behind me on the counter. To the best of my recollection, that salsa was not
served, otherwise I probably would have nimbly dipped corn chips into it,
careful not to get any of the chunks.

But to stay on point, of course there are other reasons to value the bun aside from just combatting the rising tide of gluten intolerance. That wise, old Hungarian sage was right: buns are a great companion for someone always on the go--small or not. The bun is the most highly evolved form of bread and is the most portable. Like a baguette, they are a self-contained unit, only without the unruly length and shape. (I honestly don’t understand the appeal of baguettes beyond making bruschetta, which I would obviously never do. But every time I go the grocery store in Montreal’s hipster heart, I see hordes of people pawing at the baguettes, and I think--although I can’t be sure--that it has something to do with being seen biking home with a baguette sticking out of their backpack. I can’t figure out why this is a good thing, but I think it might be because it suggests that the purchaser of that baguette also purchases cheese, and there is a certain amount of cultural and social currency that goes with buying cheese, which, in my heart of hearts, I wish I could cash in on.) Sliced bread is great when you’re at home (although I avoid unsliced loaves at all costs because they are so difficult to slice), but it’s not as portable as a bun and isn’t encased in crust, which usually serves to protect the bun from being crushed in a bag. The other problem with sliced bread is that it can be a pretty hefty commitment. Unless you freeze it, you have a relatively small window of time in which to eat it, and if you forget it in your cupboard when you go home for Christmas for two weeks, you are in for a really unpleasant surprise when you return. Of course buns mold too, but the point that I’m try to get at is that you can buy just one or two buns rather than committing to a whole bag of them. There is also something more acceptable about serving a bun (whether it be on a plane or a buffet table) than a slice of bread, and I believe that it is because while a slice of bread can only ever be part of a whole, a bun is its own single entity. I certainly don’t want to suggest that buns are the best form of bread for every occasion (obviously no one wants to substitute buns for toast), but they do have their merits and they deserve out praise and attention.

Bun on the run.

Friends, what if you find yourself at a social event
And the food table leaves you feeling like a sullen malcontent?
Don’t despair, don’t give up; take advice from Sally Lunn:
Forego everything else and go straight for the bun.
Savour that bun and act highfalutin:
It’s your God given duty to protect all the gluten
From the monsters who would try to take it from us
And turn gluten allergies into such a wide-reaching fuss
After all, allergies tell us something about our ability to survive--
There must be a theory about this to contrive?
Admittedly, I’m not the fittest condenser
So I’ll direct your attention to the works of Herbert Spencer.

Rice

Hot damn! The rice at Rancho Chico's is SO GOOD. One time I asked what
rice they used and where they got it from, and the waiter was obviously
uncomfortable and said he didn't know, but I know that he just wasn't willing
to tell me. I don't even care if they won't tell me. I am more than happy to
pay $3 for this mystery rice, and going to Colville is a pleasure in itself.

When I was about four or five I came up with a great joke that drew on all of the important elements of my life and wove them together into what seemed at the time the greatest comic query ever produced:

Q: What did Michael Jackson say to the bowl of rice?

A: Let’s eat!

Black or White was my favourite song at the time and I guess we were having rice for dinner. Who knows. Rice is such a boring food that it’s impossible to remember when you’ve eaten it. I had a 10kg bag of rice in my closet and now it’s gone and I guess that I ate it because it’s no longer there.

But the charm of rice lies in the ease with which it is forgotten. Like an undervalued friend, it’s always there for you. But unlike the undervalued friend trope, you won’t learn a valuable lesson in taking things for granted once they’re gone because rice will never ever desert you because there is so much rice in this world and it is so cheap. It's a food that, until now, I have never really had to think about. I eat it because it's filling and cheap and doesn't really taste like anything.

Here is a delicious plate of plain rice that I enjoyed in
Bogota. I was with my mum at the time and we had met up
with a girl I met in El Salvador a few months before who was
now living and working in Colombia. She took us to this
restaurant where both she and my mum ordered really
outrageous and enormous dishes, while I happily consumed
this and contented myself with the knowledge that I was
not a disgusting human being who hate disgusting things.

Honestly I don't know what else I can say about rice. I realise now that a lot of this post is about me eating rice in Central America. I guess that's because that was the time in my life when rice really took the centre stage of my diet. By eating almost nothing but rice, I was able to forget about food and stop worrying about what I would eat that day and focus on the important things, like learning how to smoke and, for the first time in my life, really enjoying casual drinking. Rice allows for great things to happen in your life without ever taking the credit for them.

Some Ways that I Like to Eat Rice:

• With cheese sauce. Not with cheese sauce, obviously--that would be disgusting. But my favourite dinner is white basmati rice, sausages, and broccoli and cauliflower smothered in cheese sauce. I eat the sausages first so nothing touches them/is touched by them, and then I eat the vegetables. But once the vegetables are gone, there is still a pool of cheese sauce on the plate, and I like it when some of the cheese sauce touches the edges of some of the rice, but I don’t think I would ever like to push the rice onto the cheese sauce because that would be too much. It’s just nice to get a hint of cheese sauce with your rice because then you can remember and savour how delicious that cheese sauce was.
• White basmati rice with mixed frozen vegetables and soy sauce. I don't know if there is anything else to say about this except that it's a relatively new development for me. I had always relied on fried rice if I found myself in a Chinese restaurant, and one day I finally realise that I could just more or less make it myself and avoid Chinese restaurants all together. Eating rice with vegetables and soy sauce makes me think that maybe I am growing up and broadening my horizons.
• 1 part brown rice, 2 parts butter. When I was little and my mum was doing some baking, I used to lick the butter paper after she was done with it. Eating rice with tonnes of butter tastes like butter but feels like rice. It's like licking butter paper without the guilt of actually licking butter paper.
• Plain. Eating plain rice with no butter or salt is a sneaky way of tricking yourself into having an ascetic experience without actually committing to asceticism. It’s like learning something meaningful from the Orient by looking up Buddhist prayers on Wikihow.com--which I just did because I thought I would be able to make a joke about Edward Saïd, but then I lost interest.
• In a restaurant. I love going into ethnic restaurants in big, bustling cities like Vancouver or Colville, because I know that there must be at least one person who sees me enter and think, She must be a good person. She must really care about the world. Why else would she be eating at an ethnic restaurant? Ethnic restaurants always serve plain rice, and it's always the cheapest thing on the menu. And for some reason, it's usually way better than rice that I can make at home. Must be all that ethnicity.

This was kind of a weird moment for me because while I do (now) enjoy rice
with vegetables, I definitely don't enjoy rice with these vegetables. I don't even
remember what was in here... Corn, obviously, and I think some crushed tomatoes
that had cooked into the rice so it wasn't really very traumatizing, and, I don't know,
carrots? Anyway, like all of the other pictures in this post (with the exception of the
first one), this was taken in Central America and I was really hellbent on
experiencing new things.

Something to Keep in Mind:

 

Of the food I eat, I never expected that rice would be the one to betray me. But betray me it did. During my trip through Central America, I was too busy finding myself to ever even question where I was finding my rice. I lived almost entirely off of rice, and I never worried about how it was prepared because it's rice and it's really hard to mess up rice. But did you know that rice can go bad? You probably did because no one was surprised when I told them that I got rice poisoning and was so miserable that I wished only for death.

In Rio Dulce (or should I say Rio Not-So-Dulce?) I ordered a plate of rice from a street vendor just as I had done countless times before and would continue to do countless times afterward. I watched as the woman scooped out a large portion from a stainless steel bowl that was sitting on a counter and heap it onto my paper plate. But I had no qualms with eating relatively cold rice that had been warmed only by sitting out in the sun all day and was of questionable freshness. None of this was of any concern because with my restricted diet, food poisoning had never even entered my mind as a possibility for me. I ate the rice in the same way that I eat any rice--as a simple means to an end--and washed it down with a litre of beer. The afternoon and evening passed as any evening in Central America passed: lazy hammock reading followed by a rousing game of gin rummy, and this specific night, with a bag of hickory sticks which I did not enjoy in the least. When I was in bed, I broke out in a sweat and began to feel the waves of nausea wash over me. Convinced it would go away by morning, I committed myself to the task of falling asleep with great success. I was awoken at around six in the morning with an immediate need to vomit. So I jumped out of bed with the grace and agility of gazelle and ran down multiple flights of stairs to the bathroom on the main floor, certain that I would make it in time. And I did--sort of. Just as I breached the threshold of the bathroom door but had not quite made it to the stalls, I projectile vomited everywhere. And I mean everywhere. I was like a veritable fountain, spewing hickory sticks in all directions. When I had expelled what I believed to be everything that had ever been in my body and surveyed the pool of vomit that now surrounded me and covered the majority of the bathroom floor, I calmly asked the hostel receptionist to provide me with a bucket and mop to clean up the mess. I showered, I brushed my teeth, and I went back to bed. Mere minutes after crawling back into bed, I was once again on my feet and rushing down to the bathroom. This time I managed to make it to the sinks and clogged not one but three sinks with hickory sticks. After scooping the puke out of the sinks and into the garbage, I again showered and brushed my teeth and went back to bed. The third time I didn't even make it out of the room and instead just dry heaved and dribbled bile into a garbage can which, in retrospect, would have made more sense to use in the first two instances.

Upon arriving in Livingston, I remained in bed in the fetal position for one
day and one night until I finally felt well enough to greet the world, at which
point I was told by a nurse that I had suffered from rice poisoning because,
duh, rice goes bad.

The next morning I had to take a boat to Livingston and it was one if the hardest things I've ever had to do. I arrived at the hostel and immediately went to bed. Until I had an eye-opening conversation with a British nurse the following night, I had been under the impression that the hickory sticks had made me so sick. It was the first time that I had ever tried hickory sticks, and they gave me the distinct impression of being rejected McDonalds' fries that were too old, dry, and crusty to sell. But, you guys, it was the rice. It was that Rio Dulce rice that had been sitting in that stainless steel bowl in the sun for God knows how long. And what followed this revelation was an existential crisis almost as painful as the rice poisoning itself. I was force to reevaluate my life and the decisions I had made. Could I still eat rice? What would it mean to give up something that had, for so long, been such a central staple of my diet? How could I continue a trip in a region that depended on rice as much as I did and not eat it? Ultimately I abandoned all of these difficult questions and resumed eating rice with the same reckless abandon as before.

A plain bowl of rice

No one cares about it.

They're missing out. *

* See what I did there? That's a haiku. Get it? The Orient?

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.