Potato Stories

What's the deal with couples fighting and potatoes?  I read this blog post by Hillary last night before going to bed.  It made me smile, even though I understood her immense frustration.  She hoped to arrive home from work in time to mash the potatoes that her husband started for dinner.  Relieved that they were still boiling, she looked inside the pot to find whole, unpeeled potatoes.  Of course, they weren't cooked because they were whole.  This sparked a great fight between husband and wife.  It immediately reminded me of a story my mother has told hundreds of times throughout the years.

My parents had only been married a few months when she decided to make a nice roast for dinner.  She put the meat on to cook earlier in the day and asked my father to add the potatoes at a certain time.  When she arrived home, the wonderful aroma of perfectly cooked roast beef filled the house.  She peeked at the cooking dinner but was shocked by what she saw.  Around the roast were several whole potatoes.  Floating around in the rich broth were little brown specks.  Dirt.  Not only did my father not peel and cut up the potatoes, he didn't even wash them!  My mother remembers crying as she threw the entire dinner in the trash.  Confused, my father didn't understand why she was so angry.  (He probably would have eaten the dirty food.)  "You said to put potatoes in with the roast.  You didn't say to wash or peel them."  Today, she is able to laugh at this story, as Hillary will too (some day).  But back then, it surely wasn't funny.  So for years and years to come, she wrote notes in great detail.

1.  Wash potatoes.

2.  Wrap them in aluminum foil.

3.  Put them in the oven.

4.  Turn on the oven to 350.

5.  Close the oven door.

As I thought of these two stories, it brought back a potato memory of my own.  When Hubby and I were first married, we were in the middle of a huge, horrible fight.  Right now, I can't remember what it was about.  I just remember that it was big.  It seems like I even refused to make dinner because of how angry I was.  So Hubby took it upon himself to fix something to eat.  He put a whole potato on a plate, put it in the microwave, pushed 10:00, and went upstairs.  (I had never microwaved a potato at any point of our marriage so I have no clue where he got this idea.)  About seven minutes into this process, I entered the kitchen to discover a horrible smell.  There was smoke billowing from the microwave.  I quickly opened the door to find a potato immersed in flames.  Hubby was nowhere around.  I started yelling about the same time the smoke detector started beeping.  He ran down, completely shocked that ten minutes in the microwave was too long for a potato.  The smoke left black soot all over my white wallpaper with green ivy on it.  The white and green plate was burnt black.  The potato ended up as ashes.  I had to call off work the next day to scrub down my entire first floor.  The microwave was ruined, the plate was ruined, and the smell lasted for several days.  But after this event, neither of us could remember why we were fighting in the first place.  But I must say, a new fight resulted.

So I don't know what's the deal with potatoes.  But I will warn you, if a potato discussion arises between you and your spouse, LOOK OUT!  Trouble may lie ahead!