Potatoes

You do not want to tangle with me when I’m hungry.  If famished, I am prickly and mean and spiteful and tetchy.  Right now I am very ill-humored indeed as my stomach is kicking up quite a fuss while it waits for take-out breakfast potatoes to be delivered.  I can give a little for potatoes but I wouldn’t push it if you are the delivery person.  I can yank that sack out of your hand so fast you lose your balance and step squarely into the fresh cat doo doo in my flower bed.  (That cat is on the top of my list; the very top.) But, it’s potatoes you’re ferrying so, I might not. A lot depends on how quickly you get here.     

It never dawned on me that I plan dinners out-of-the-norm until someone joked about it.  I guess everyone else plans their menus around the entrée.  Well, I don’t. I plan mine around the potatoes.  Once the potatoes are set I know exactly what the meat will be.  Mashed potatoes beckon a roasting meat and its accompanying gravy.  Potato salad says yoo-hoo to burgers or brats or skewers.  Gratin Savoyard commands steaks or chops.  

You meat planners have such a huge variety of options and then when you settle on one, you still are nowhere.  For all of that, you have sides to figure out.  With the amount of flummoxing required to plan a meal around an entrée, it all of a sudden makes sense to just load up on Marie Callender’s frozen dinners.  Why she has already put three things that go together in every box.  I’m telling you follow Marie’s plan or my plan because chasing the meat is just wrong. 

In hindsight I wonder how many potential suitors I lost over the years because of my potatoes’ jones.   I love expensive restaurants because they serve expensive food which usually includes well- prepared potatoes.   Sure, I’ll eat spaghetti and Subway $5.00 foot longs but I am a lot more charming at the expensive steak houses.  Filet mignon, medium, with béarnaise sauce, steamed asparagus (usually ordered out of season as reflected in the price) and whatever potato specialty they are serving.

 When the $$$$$ plate is set in front of me I eat every mouthful of the potatoes before touching anything else.   Then I am stuffed.  Not able to eat one bite of the steak or the asparagus without unbuttoning my pants I beg my potatoes to digest.  They rarely do and I am left with costly congealed $$$$ on my plate.  Recognizing that I am not going to be able to eat until sometime long after they have turned the lights out, I offer to buy.  That never worked and I think the wheels turning in the guys’ heads were saying “Let me just buy this dinner, dump this potato head and chalk it up to a lesson learned.”  

We are going to Dublin in the spring.  Everyone has been yammering about the ale since the trip was booked.  I’m in for the ale but I am in for the potatoes too.  Some people can’t wait to drink beer with the Irish.  I can’t wait to eat potatoes with them.  Until then…tata.  

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