My Heart is a Potato by Phoebe Thorburn
My Heart is a Potato
It’s a tit-splittingly cold, blustery Sunday morning, and my friend and I are warming ourselves with a hot drink in a crowded yellow kiosk on top of the cliff. We talk of the new winter essentials we’ve bought ourselves and the air-fryer her family got for Christmas.
11:30 rolls around, signalling the start of the lunch menu. My friend says she’s going to order a bowl of chips to share and I think my heart’s going to explode.
Potatoes are so safe, so gentle and kind to my bedraggled digestion. They’re reliably orgasmic and poop-regulating. My body answers yes.
I think I’m going to cry.
She asks for ketchup, not the aioli.
I keep it together.
For ordering a bowl of potatoes - I’m disproportionately moved. Acting on a bodily want, on such a shamed food group. I thought I was the food positive one, but evidently relationally, not quite.
My unconditional positive regard somehow multiplies. This memory set to solidify as favourite.
We’re about to grow closer with a bowl of chips between us, than words could ever take us.
They arrive on the table - yellow, crisp and long, tomato sauce in one pot and aioli in another. My friend frowns, my eyes widen. Ah well, I say pulling the cardboard cup towards me with a melodramatic sweep.
Their aroma unlocks my brain’s compendium of distinctly spuddy memories. Paprika wedges with dandruff-like edges, sour cream & sweet chilli sauce ordered to share. Beer battered chips blowing my pre-teen brain’s out and over-priced fries attained at the footy, parent relenting between the third & fourth quarter.
We settle into our rhythm of dunking and eating. Me taking one, for their every three.
I suspect they’ll insist on paying.
Hash-browns cooked under the grill with microwaved eggs at my grandparents for breakfast in bed. Potato scallops eaten as a complete food group with Friday night fish & chips. My Mum’s potato gratin - made of potatoes, milk, butter & onion with Sunday night roast, and tots tried for the first time at an ice-skating end of year school trip.
The recent potato shortage here in so-called Australia was disarmingly sad. Pubs denied bowls of chips for the table, but allowed them as a side. The potato not a vegetable of logic.
It was a moment of national reflection, for how much we delight in their presence on our plate, and how unnecessarily we expend energy perpetuating their demise.
A minute of the lips, forever on the hips.
No no, a minute on the lips and now my heart is a potato.
Why do potatoes taste better shared by the sea? Their salty aroma carried in the breeze. On a cold day, rods of warmth filling our bellies.
My friend is recovering from a cold and I wonder if sharing will mean I get it too. A thought under three years old. I push it down, playing pick-up chips - my fingers finding those buried beneath.
When I was eight, my family and I toured a potato chip factory in a small town in Washington State. Corridors permitting a rich, starchy warmth from the factory below. The smell intoxicating.
We were offered a sample still warm from the fryer. Crinkle cut, I think. Everyone oo-ed and ah-ed at the delicacy. How practically gourmet. Warped expectations dulling my enjoyment, I realized then I preferred them cool and crisp from the bag.
There’s a moment in My Big Fat Greek Wedding when love interest Ian, meets his friend in the protagonist Toula’s family’s restaurant. While his friend vents about missed opportunities, Ian picks at his unfinished potatoes, asking in wonderment - what’s on these?
I researched Greek roast potatoes after that, landing on a recipe where you bake them long and hot in oily stock with lemons and oregano. They infuse and roast up into deeply flavourful logs of comfort.
In the film, good things happen to Ian. He meet’s Toula, life becoming exciting and flavourful. Letting go of inhibitions, leading to a happy ending.
Good things happen to those who eat the potatoes.
Potato rösti shallow fried in olive oil for brunch on weekends, sprinkled with flakey sea salt, topped with cream cheese, smoked salmon and lemon. Shoe string fries, soft & pale, dipped into sulphuric mayonnaise like savoury Pokey, and potatoes laboured over, roasted twice, served with crumbly feta and oregano at Nigella’s recommendation. Divinely rich, made just the once.
Imperfectly round, potatoes are global. Cosplaying in national dishes; Potatoes Bravas, Pommes Anna, Aloo Golbi and Colcannon. They’re a unifier. Cheap and sustaining. Approachable, if heavy to handle.
When you’ve eaten them at their best, one missing the mark is a frustration. Half-arsed, undercooked roasted spuds - more grey than golden - that slide down your oesophagus slower than a slug, triggers dysphoria.
But potato fussiness is an oxymoron. They’re the people’s starch, filling and accessible. A peasant food approached with the same fervour by each class bracket. Methodology a spectrum, outcome satiating and reliable.
I suppose I respect them too much to not have them reach their full potential. I select the variety with studious consideration, affording them the attention and diligence of a main. If I’m to lug them home, bend my wrists, scrub their skins, flex my fingers, peel them bare - they best be a nearing a spiritual somatic experience by the time I’m finished.
Maybe that’s why enjoying them prepared by another, is a child-like joy. Having them appear out of thin air - a little too good to be true.
The last few crispy bits linger in the bowl between us. I’m done, my friend announces, dusting their hands.
Like communion, I down the remaining kindling, determined to be the next person I know who orders chips on a whim.
I want to be, a potato person.
