The most wholesome, delicious potatoes I’ve tasted in a long time came from the Minnesota Garlic Festival this summer. It was pouring down rain when Liz and I ducked under a canopy that led to a small booth of farmer’s produce. On the table were two paper dishes of homegrown potatoes. One held a buttery Yukon Gold variety. The other, Russet baking potatoes about the size of a garlic, so clean and shorn it was hard to believe they emerged from under the Earth.
We came home with the baking potatoes, sliced them up, boiled them and served them with butter and pork chops a few days later. I’m a big potato lover. In fact, anything carbohydrate hits the spot. Potatoes remind me of Woody Guthrie and the Dust Bowl days but maybe that’s because I was watching a documentary on him at 2am Monday night because I couldn’t sleep.
Last night for dinner, we had a couple of steaks grilled on our new Grill It! from the Minnesota State Fair and microwaved Bob Evans mashed potatoes from Byerly’s. The last time I was at a Bob Evans was with my brother after he picked me up at the Baltimore airport. On the drive back to Harrisburg, we stopped at a Bob Evans and had dinner in between catching a few geocaches. I’m sure I must have ordered mashed potatoes.
I remember Granny’s mashed potatoes, my paternal grandmother who lived in Morristown, Tennessee. That woman could cook. I was probably in high school the last time I saw her. But it’s the holiday dinners at her home when I was a much younger child that I remember best. I don’t know if I’ve ever tasted mashed potatoes like that anywhere else in the world. She also canned her own green beans; she’d sit on the porch and snap them one by one into a glass bowl. Always served with butter. In the South, vegetables were always served dripping with real butter.
Mashed potatoes are comfort food to me. They are cheap and filling. You can buy the real deal or microwave them in tater tot form, bake them au gratin, shred them into hash browns, or scrub their skins with a vegetable brush and pop them into the oven or microwave to bake, then slather with butter and sour cream.
There is nothing as flexible as the iconic potato. And if you free associate the word “potato,” that tricky deadly Nightshade can take you all the way to Ireland, or sliding down the back steps of the political campaign of Dan Quayle. Now that’s a versatile tuber.
-related to Writing Topic post: I Found Potatoes In My Pantry (& They Scared The Hell Out Of Me)
Great blog. Comfort food. You can’t beat it. You might also enjoy reading this:
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Yes, the potato! Tonight I made my first attempt at homemade scalloped potatoes. Not too shabby!
I remember, when I was growing up, my Dad was a meat & potatoes man. Another thing, because he was all about starch & carbohydrates, he even ate french fries with spaghetti! Now that’s a serious potato man! Funny thing is that he barely eats potatoes anymore. Wonder what changed? D
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Middle Man, thanks for stopping by. Interesting to read the British version of comfort foods. Saturday tea with jam sandwiches, hmmm. When I was a kid, I used to eat plain jelly sandwiches. Or ketchup sandwiches. Even mayo sandwiches. Just the bread and the one smear of topping, whatever it was!
diddy, French Fries and spaghetti? Now that’s a combo I haven’t heard of before. Yes, ask your Dad why he doesn’t eat potatoes anymore. Curious to know.
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QM, have I ever told you about one of my neighbors when I was growing up. They were from Tennessee, I believe, and they ate white bread, smothered in lard, topped with sugar. They had a daughter a year younger than me and my mother always used to say, if she’d stop eating those lard-and-sugar sandwiches, her face wouldn’t break out so much. 8) (She did have very bad acne.)
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ybonesy, I don’t know if you ever did tell me that. Lard and sugar? Not butter and sugar but lard? I’ve never heard of that. I remember when people kept a jar of lard on the stove for cooking, common practice at one time. It does make for a great flavor in cooking. But I sure can’t imagine spreading it cold on white bread with sugar. Well, to each their own! I wonder if there are others out there who have tried this. Would be interested in hearing. I’ll also do a little investigation on it when we head South in October.
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We had a can of fat on our stove, but we just threw it away, we never used it for cooking. But only half of our family was southern, so maybe that was it.
I love potatoes and nightshade and starch. You didn’t mention french fries or potato chips. YUM.
I have some little red potatoes I got from the farmers’ market recently…I think I’ll be enjoying those with steak tomorrow. Mmmm. I heart potatoes.
btw, my Grandma makes mashed potatoes from a box. Shhhh.
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QM, my Dad pretty much cut out carbs from his diet. He’ll eat baked or mashed potatoes on occasion, but rarely french fries or chips. He’d rather eat a baked sweet potato with his meal. Not me, I love potatoes! Last night I fried some up & we had them with creamed chip beef over toast for supper. D
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