Them Darn Taters (a.k.a. The One that Got Away)

"Potato" is a funny word. What kind of word has an extra "es" when plural? That's not even logical. After pondering this for a bit longer than necessary, I'd become so confused that I had to google "potatoes" and "potatos" to figure out which spelling was correct. It's potatoes, just in case you were wondering.

So, once upon a time (as in yesterday), I was making mashed potatoes with Idaho potatoes. For the record, the mashed potatoes were not that great. I'm not sure what else I could use them for; perhaps baked potatoes? It seems the internet powers that be have deemed Idaho potatoes unfit for certain uses...something about the water content or something. Having downed some watery, nasty mashed taters last night, I believe them.

Upon scouring my pantry for those potatoes I knew I had bought last week, I finally found a smelly bag full of them. That's right. Smelly. "Potatoes aren't supposed to be smelly," I thought.

After dumping them into my sink I found the culprit: a mushy, wet, moldy potato. A bit repulsed, I threw it in the trash. (On an entirely different note, this happened to the last bag of potatoes I bought. There's no reason for a mushy, wet, moldy tater to exist in my little bag of taters. I wish the gods of produce would have mercy on me. Having to fish out two mushy, wet, moldy potatoes is pretty taxing.)

Anyway, life went happily on and I peeled, cut, and boiled them bad boys. As they were boiling away, I started putting some of the peels down the disposal. Now in my family, we disposed all sorts of things. Carrot peels, potato peels, egg shells. I kind of imagined it like a blender for garbage. Not so, my friend, not so.

The disposing was going well until the the machine started making a funny noise. My suspicions that something was indeed wrong were confirmed when the thing came to a screeching halt, then refused to even start up after further tries. In a word, I broke it.

I would have never known why I broke it without my husband. Ever the fix-it man, he proceeded to fish out WITH HIS BARE HANDS everything I had put down the disposal. One handful of potato skins. Two handfuls of potato skins. Three handful of potato skins. Okay, I thought, three handfuls of potato skins is a little excessive I guess. I should go easy on the disposal. Then, from the bowels of the disposal. emerged a potato. A whole potato. A huge, whole, white potato.

Ryan looked at me. "How did this get down there?" I was just as confused as he was. "Uh. I have no idea. I mean, I dumped them into the sink before I peeled them, but, um. I didn't see any go down the drain." Ryan just laughed.

A bit more tinkering around, and he had fixed it. I was amazed. "How did you fix it?" "I pushed the reset button." "It has a reset button?!" I didn't even know it had buttons. "Yeah, I pushed the reset button. Next time, don't put entire vegetables down it, okay?" And off he went.

"Uh-huh. Okay, sweetie. Sure thing."

I love that man. Anytime I go spinning out of control, he brings me back to earth with his common sense. Like not over-stuffing the disposal til it breaks.

And that, dear reader, is why I need this man in my life.