I said the unthinkable and my mother would be horrified! Potatoes, the staple of my childhood, stress me out. I rarely cook them and all-together avoid looking at the spuds in the supermarket. I use the excuse that my children don't really like them but in truth it is that cooking them terrifies me.
Picture it... Sault Ste. Marie, 2003 (sorry, I grew up on the Golden Girls), I am throwing my first ever dinner party as a married lady. The pot roast has been seasoned just the way Jane Carols' Mitford Kitchen Reader tells me to and it has been baking away happily all day; Sarg and I are chatting it up happily with our guests but in the back of my mind I am reeling because the potatoes are not done. What did I do wrong? What is going on with those potatoes? To this day, I have no idea what the issue was. The entire roast was cooked to perfection but these stubborn potatoes would not soften!
In the end I did what any self respecting modern woman would and discretely stuck them in the microwave for 3 minutes on high.
It may seem like a small issue but ever since that day I have been terrified of potatoes and I have had the worst luck cooking them *sigh* I keep telling myself that someday I will master the art of cooking a potato... but for tonight my shopping cart is going to roll right on by.
