In my previous post, I mentioned having had an opportunity to talk with my sister about some of the lessons we learned which occurred in the kitchen or were connected with food. She reminded me of one such lesson involving a potato and a blind fold.
Steak and Potatoes
One spring evening in 1978, my father decided to surprise the family by preparing dinner. He had gone to the grocery store to pick up the items for dinner. There were bags, bowls and containers everywhere. You might have thought that he was cooking for an army not two adults and two children. But as was his custom, anytime he cooked it became a major production.
A meal that would take any normal human less than an hour to prepare could take my father several hours. He always had to somehow deviate or in his mind improve on an already well-established recipe.
Every teaspoon, tablespoon and cup of an ingredient was painstaking measured. All food was washed and cleaned until the items glisten. The process was so arduous that you were never sure if he was making dinner or preparing a museum exhibit.
Not Quite Iran
Well on this day, much like all the other times that he hijacked the kitchen, my sister and I had to sit in the kitchen with him like two hostages. We were expected to sit and give him our full undivided attention as if we were cavemen watching fire for the first time. As he talked incessantly about his pending food masterpiece all we could hear was the grumbling from the pit of our stomachs.
I’m sure that he could see on our faces the agony of being held captive in the kitchen but it didn’t matter. Even hearing our growling stomachs and knowing that his two only begotten children were agonizing and on the verge of starvation did not persuade the Slow Cooker to do anything different.
Two Blind Mice Trapped With No Cheese
So my sister and I watched my father like two starving mice trapped in a corner – nowhere to go, starving and afraid to make a move. His production started by tenderizing and seasoning four steaks which you should know was a rarity for us. We didn’t have steaks often unless you call cube steaks the same as real steaks. It was usually good ole ground chuck or chicken for us.
After the meat was tenderized he started massaging oils and – what I will call for a lack of a better word – ointments into the steaks. Watching him patting and caressing the steaks made me wonder if the steak was ill or if this was some new mystical lesson we were about to learn about how to resurrect a dead steer.
Next, he began preparing a salad. Now I’m a vegetarian and to this day I’m not sure if I can ever remember seeing so many different types of vegetable put into one salad. I’m not sure where he got many of the things that he put in the salad but I am almost certain that the vegetable he included were not grown in North America.
After what was easily an hour of pure unadulterated torment, he finally started washing the last item of his meal – four potatoes. In addition to the steak and salad, we were going to have baked potatoes. Why didn’t he wash and bake the potatoes first? Didn’t he know that the potatoes would take the longest time to cook? Both excellent questions. I asked myself the same things. The only conclusion that I could come up with then and now is that he enjoyed torturing his children.
When Baking Was Baking
Remember this was 1974, microwaves may have been invented but we were not one of the privileged families who were able to afforded one. So our baked potatoes were going to actually be baked potatoes.
While I waited for the potatoes to cook, I stared intently at the oven as if I could will the potatoes to cook faster. Indistinguishably, I could hear my father rambling on and on about something. His words were like those of Charlie Brown’s teacher, “wah wah woh wah wah”.
Already starving and feeling like a tortured hostage being forced to listen to the ramblings of a mad man, I felt like yelling “I did it, I did it already”. Surely, I was being held captive in an attempt to get me to confess to some heinous crime.
Sitting and waiting for the potatoes to cook was like an accused sweating out an interrogation before his attorney arrived. The potatoes were supposed to take about an hour to cook. Only fifteen minutes had elapsed. Forty-five more minutes before we could eat. Forty-five more long minutes before my father could put some food in his mouth and shut – “the you know what” – up.
Finally, the oven beeped. The potatoes were done. As he handed me one of the potatoes wrapped in aluminum foil, I realized for the first time in hours that he was actually expecting me to eat a baked potato. I didn’t want any stinking baked potato. I wanted French fries. Ordinarily, I would have vehemently objected but on this day perhaps suffering from the mental debilitating effects of starvation, I took the baked potato and sat down at the kitchen table quickly and quietly.
Finally, at least two hours since the Mad Slow Cooker began his food masterpiece, dinner was ready to be served. I salivated over the steak in my plate like Fat Albert preparing to eat a slice of chocolate cake. Similarly, like Fat Albert, I tried to skip out on eating the bowl of vegetables but the Mad Slow Cooker was having none of that. His motto was “no salad, no dinner, no negotiations”.
No Skin For Me
As was my custom, I pulled the skin off of the potato. I wasn’t about to eat the skin but my father had other ideas. As I started pulling the skin off the potato, I could feel someone staring at me. When I looked up to see if my intuition was correct, I saw my father looking at me ever so disapprovingly. What was his problem I wondered? Every time, I removed a piece of skin his countenance became more nefarious.
Was the potato like a voodoo doll? Was there some psychic connection between the potato and my father? Something odd was occurring because each piece of the skin that I extracted from the potato was distressing to him, as if I was pulling the flesh off of his bones.
The Grand Inquisition
Not being able to take what I was doing to the spud any longer, my father asked “why are you pulling all the skin off of that potato?” Like any twelve year old, I appropriately replied, “I don’t like the skin”. “Have you ever tried eating the skin?” he asked. Like any twelve year old, I expectantly replied, “no”. “Well how do you know you don’t like it”, he questioned. Like any twelve year old, I sarcastically replied, “because”.
Well my responses to his three questions were apparently so insufficient the idea of just letting me eat my dinner was unacceptable. Instead, dinner was halted and I was subjected to another of my father’s life lessons.
Don’t Judge a Potato by Its Skin
My father then told me to go to my room. Dad gum (or a word similar to dad gum), I thought I had crossed the line and now I was about to get a whooping with my own belt again. Nate he said, “Go get a tie”. A tie not a belt. Oh thank God.
When I returned from my room, he took the tie from me. He placed the tie around my eyes and tied it around the back of my head. The teachable moment had begun. I would be an unwilling participant in the Mad Slow Cooker’s homemade taste test.
His intent was to convince me that I couldn’t tell the difference between the potato with or without the skin. He proclaimed the skin contained the bulk of the nutrients and as such I should be eating the skin.
As the involuntary Ginny Pig, as much as I hated to admit it, I could not tell the difference. In fact, I ended up unknowingly acknowledging that the potato with skin tasted the best.
This time, my father’s obnoxious habit of needing to take something ordinary and turn into some glorified teachable moment resulted in actually being a valued learning experience. Beyond learning how to tune out my oppressors in a hostage crisis and how to endure starvation, there were several additional things I took away from dinner that night.
Build Character
- Don’t Prejudge – During that late night dinner, I learned that it is best to avoid judging things from an outward appearance. I had decided not to eat the skin of the potato because I did not like the look of the skin. In life, I have learned that I should not prejudge the inside of another because of the appearance of their skin.
- Golden May Not Be Gold – When I first recognized that I was going to have to eat a baked potato, I pouted because I was not going to be able to eat French fries. What I now know that I didn’t know as a child was that the French fries were deep fried (in animal fat back in the day) and the frying process had virtually eliminated all the nutritional value of the potato. In life, I have learned that many things that look valuable and precious are not so. Sometimes the thing that is less expensive without the ostentatious packaging is better for you, just as good and works just as well if not better than the lavish thing that is shiny and glitters.
- Be Open Minded – As much as I didn’t want to eat the baked potato not only did I have to admit that it was good but by eating it I gave myself an additional dietary option. How dull would my life be if the only thing I ever ate were French fries? As a result of that late night meal, I learned that having different experiences and different types of people to associate with enhances one’s life.
I have a sneaky suspicion now that the next time you have a baked potato you will see it as something more than simply a baked potato. Hopefully, you will see it as an opportunity to unlearn something we have been conditioned almost from birth to do – judge everything we see and hear on its outward appearance and not by its inward expression.
Do you judge everything by its outward appearance or by its inward expression?