Monday, October 03, 2011

Rotten Potatoes

I found a rotten potato today. Actually, it found me. I opened up the pantry door and it literally reached out with long green tenacles of pew and smacked my nostrils.

Ugh, gagalicious, and watch me spew.

Mushy Rotten Potatoes. Not much can compare to the way it assaults ones senses.

But being the frugal type homemaker I am. I knew I couldn't just waste that potato. Noooo
I hunted it down, cleaned it, cut it up and put it in my roast to feed to the family later. Of course with my decerning taste, I can't eat it.

AS IF...

I pulled that smelly mushy thing out of the bag by the tips of two fingers ( while I carefully plugged my nose with the other hand) and tossed it in the trash. ( and found a couple more potatoes beside it that were getting soft rotten spots and tossed those too.)

But it got me thinking about life... and how some of us actually thing we can keep the rotten potatoes around. How we try to make culinary delights out of rotten fare. Dress it up with rich flavors and think the world won't notice.

Some of us actually believe our potatoes don't stink. Our potato are a more expensive brand, so much better and they even have a hybrid brand name that keeps are potatoes from emanating any kind of smell.

And even if they do, the odor isn't that bad.  We can smell the stench and ignore it. Or can buy expensive perfumes, heavy deodorants or take a gazillion baths to conceal it. And people should and will accept our potatoes stench because those potatoes are ours.

We'll deal with our rotten potatoes. When the time comes, we'll look at our potatoes again and we'll take out the bad one. Maybe... For now, it's small, it won't hurt anything.

Funny thing is... when we go to use the potatoes, they are all rotten, just because of that one stinky, mushy potato we didn't throw away before.

But we do, using our calibrated sniffers, smell everyone elses rotten potatoes. We turn up our noses and let them know how much their rotten potatoes stink. And it's always worse than ours.

And we all have our rotten potatoes.

I remember my mother, who didn't want to throw anything out... used to use moldy bread. I understand using dry bread for croutons, stuffings, and such, but Moldy bread. She told us the green growing on the bread was just penicillin and they cut mold off cheese, so she could do the same with bread. It wouldn't hurt us, infact it could be good for us. Especially during cold and flu season. She would cut of the moldy parts, dip it in eggs and cinnamon and feed it to us as French Toast for breakfast. Breakfast and meds in one bite. YUMMM

Can I just say... all the syrup and peanut butter in the world, didn't kill the taste of mold. It lingered after every bite. The thought alone could kill you... You could almost smell it, even though the green had been cut away.

All the lysol and scented candles won't get rid of the stench of rotten potato, one has to pull it out of the potato pack and deep six it.

What rotten potatoes are you carrying around?

5 comments:

Unknown said...

I actually did throw one away today. Get out of my kitchen! :)

Linda said...

No soup with rotten potatoes! Absolutely not! UGH!

jude urbanski said...

Tina, just had potatoes in a pot roast tonight!

We're quick to throw away things that smell in our lives, but maybe they are teachable moments. Nice blog.

Diane Craver said...

Interesting post, Tina. I throw away rotten potatoes but we do have tomatoes now that might have bad spots. I cut off the part that is spoiled and see if the rest is good enough to eat. We have too much wildlife around our tomatoes and have to pick them before they are fully ripe. LOL

Symbolically, I have smelly things in my life that I need to live with.

Tracy Krauss said...

LOL - loved this post. Even the slightest hint of mold on bread and I throw it out. I can't stand it.

FYI - I awarded you the 'Lovely blogger award' on my blog. http://www.tracykraussexpressionexpress.com