Odd O'blography

Spuds!

Lilith 🎄 Christmas Cheer raised the subject of potatoes in her forum today: Question of the Day! 

I won't try to choose one recipe or even a specific type of potato to call a favorite. For me, the potato is simply a fact of life: always present, always welcome, and never disappointing. Some people have potatoes every day. I have potatoes with every meal. It's rare for me to sit down to eat without some form of potato on my plate. Hash browns, french fries, streak fries, jo-jos, tater-tots, chips, mashed, boiled, roasted, scalloped, baked, twice-baked, and of course there's my wife's excellent potato salad. I even have potato pancakes for breakfast at our local diner. You could say that potatoes are in my blood. They're certainly well-established around my middle. If we are what we eat, then just call me spuds.

When I was a child, my family grew our own. We had a half-acre garden and half of that was potato patch. In the spring, I would cut last year's left-over potatoes into wedges and plant them with their 'eyes' pointing up. I'd weed them and 'hill' them up in the summer. Mom would pay me fifty cents to gather a pint jar full of potato bugs and then drown the nasty little buggers. When the vines succumbed to Autumn's frost, I'd dig potatoes for days and haul them to the root cellar. There were wooden cribs along the back wall where the potatoes would keep until next spring. And the cycle would repeat. And the cycle would repeat.