OUTBURSTS & STAINERS
POTATO
When the dummy insisted on adding an e, you helped
bring down a presidency, ended a troubled four year
reign because who wants a president with a bad speller
for a vice president, a dull witted preppy embarrassment
sheepishly stumbling about one heartbeat removed from
the worlds most powerful office.
Yes. You are the potato. Apparently unwholesome and
nondescript, but actually highly nutritious and, in fact,
surprisingly significant. When you failed to appear in the
1840s, half of Ireland ended up arresting pickpockets
in crime ridden Manhattan and extinguishing tenement
fires in tinder dry Brooklyn. And when my grandparents
arrived in Canada from Ukraine in 1903, that first winter
in the bushlands of northeastern Alberta, it was you who
saved them from starvation.
Boiled baked fried scalloped drawn and quartered, whats
the difference. You always taste great. Very young, I can
still remember enjoying you cold, right out of the fridge.
The British love to chip you. Slavic peoples wrap you in
dough. In America they cut you up, put you in a little box
then freeze you beside a brace of industrial green peas and
a slice of dead turkey.
Registered dieticians and licensed nutritionists cant decide
what to do with you. Are you the rock solid foundation of
the four basic food groups, the essential keystone for our
critically important food pyramid. Or are you something far
less worthy. Public Health Enemy Number One. The Toxic
Tuber. Merely providing instant gratification, while constantly
contributing to unsightly obesity and forever causing fatal
pancreatic and cardiovascular disease.
Amidst this profound flux, such inherent instability, its
reassuring to know youre always there:
Tasty, satisfying, oozing rich yellow butter, slathered in thick
sour cream, splattered with bright red ketchup. Because
youre the potato. Difficult to spell but always accessible.
Sometimes attacked by blight, eaten by mange, but most
times in the peak of condition even when deepfried into an
unrecognizable blob or powermashed back into oblivion.
And thats why I love and respect you.
The spud
The French fry
The Potato
