Potato Memories

While cooking today, I had a strong food memory pounce on me, unexpectedly. As an experiment, instead of boiling peeled potatoes, I baked them whole for 2 and half hours, then split them while hot to let out steam before discarding the skins and sending the flesh through the food mill. The smell of the steam coming out of the over-baked potatoes sent me back....

It was in the kitchen of the house I grew up on Staten Island. My mom was making some sort of chicken or lamb chop, along with mashed potatoes. This evening was a little unusual, because my mom had a friend over from work, it was her assistant or secretary, maybe one and the same. My brother was there, too. For some reason, I told my mom that I wanted baked potatoes, not mashed potatoes. I didn't have some big preference for one or the other, but for some reason I insisted that THAT was what I wanted. She took one of the potatoes she was going to peel, boil and mash, and placed it in the oven. Being that dinner was 2 hours out, this was probably the longest that Mom would ever bake a potato. I remember when we sat down at the table, she was just finishing cooking but my potato was the first thing to come out. I cut it in half and a fragrant poof of potato steam came out of the spud, giving a wonderful scent all over the kitchen. Mom's friend said, "That's the potato yeast", and I could see her staring hungrily at my potato. I started eating it immediately, I think I was 4 or 5 and had no great desire to be polite or classy. I did know that I enjoyed my baked potato more than anyone enjoyed the mashed.

I was not a big pain in the ass when it came to food and special meals, but I guess getting my mom to bend to my will in front of one of her professional friends was some how exciting.

TODAY'S COOKING:
Knishes: Prep for potato, sweet potato, cabbage, kasha, spinach, broccoli cheddar and the dough.  Dough needs to rest upwards of a day. Baked 5lbs of potato, caramelized 5 lbs of chopped onion. Found I didn't have enough potato, so got more potato from today's CSA, peeled and boiled them and used them for the broccoli and spinach fillings. Cooked up a cup of kasha, added the sauteed onion as well as garlicky sauteed mushroom. Sauteed 1/4 of a cabbage with a little vinegar, salt and sugar.

Heath Salad: Used 3/4 of a head to make the standard recipe, definitely need more raw veg in me soon.

BREAKFAST: 9:45am, good granola in organic dead milk, .5 bowl, hunger 4/5

LUNCH: 1:45pm, breaded tilapia, 2 ears of boiled corn, can of grape soda, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5

DINNER: 6:30pm, large green salad, potato chips, frozen pizza, 1 bowl, hunger 4/5
I was going to have gnocchi for dinner, but for whatever reason, boiling them from frozen turned them into a homogeneous mush. When I boiled them the day I made them, they retained their shape. Oh well.

EVENING SNACK: 9:30pm, chocolate chips & peanuts, .25 bowl, hunger 4/5