Hot Potato

Food – Positive:



There’s nothing better than a baked potato. Wrapped in silver foil, you hear the oil crackle while it is still in the oven. You slowly and carefully – don’t want to get burned now – peel back the protective foil and expose the golden skin, opened in the middle where the butter has pooled. A sprig of rosemary lends extra flavoring inside the foil; salt crystals dot the top of the skin, as if encrusted with diamonds. As you cut open the buttery slit, steam escapes from the inside. The flesh of the potato is smooth and creamy. The skin is crisp, so you need to use quite a bit of force to cut a chunk off; the flesh is the opposite, crumbling slightly under the pressure of the knife. The hunk of potato crowns your fork as you bring it to your mouth. The aroma of butter, salt, rosemary, and starch reaches your nose. Your mouth begins to water. It is hot and steamy, so you gently blow, as if it will cool down that little nugget of lava. After waiting a few seconds, you place the fork in your mouth. You promptly spit it back out since it is still too hot. You wait a few moments and then try again. Much better. The flesh is warm, salty, creamy, sweet, and delicious. The mixture of spices and natural flavor explode in your mouth.



Food – Negative:



Nothing’s worse than a freshly baked potato. Especially to a diabetic. Inside that crackling, metallic foil lies the foe. He drove you to require daily insulin injections. As you peel away the metal enclosure, a wrinkly, brown, turd-shaped object lies there. Underneath it is a pool of oil and butter. Heart attack waiting to happen. You poke it with your fork and knife. The skin is so rough and dry you cannot penetrate it with a regular utensil. A large, oversized knife has to be used to penetrate the ironclad defenses of the stale skin. Immediately a geyser of hot steam is released and you jump back to save yourself from the scalding air. It always seems like a life or death dinner when there’s the baked potato. The outside of the flesh is gooey, dry, and crumbling, while the middle is hard. There is no consistency. When you finally manage to get the potato into bite size chunks, you have to wait a half hour before you can eat this molten magma. At that time, you need something to dip it in, such as ranch dressing or ketchup, otherwise it turns your mouth into the Sahara desert. The taste is like old cardboard: stale, largely tasteless, and dry. It feels like you’re eating sand.