Day 291: Grateful for potatoes

Day 291:

Lest I seem like I don’t appreciate the lowly potato with my complaints about the lack of leafy greens here, I thought I’d take a moment to talk about potatoes and mines.

Cook used to tell us that way back during the Alaskan Gold Rush, before we’d left Earth, people would trade gold for potatoes because potatoes had vitamin C and prevented scurvy, and gold did not. I don’t know that vitamin C is an issue for me necessarily, but I’m glad to have potatoes just in case. I mean, I’ve been here long enough that I’m sure something I’m not eating anymore is causing a problem.

But there’s a better reason to eat potatoes than just to prevent all your bits from falling off (which I think is what scurvy did?). See, mines are cold, and dank, and damp, and if you don’t do something to keep warm, soon you’re cold and dank and damp too. Even if you are working constantly, because if you’re working constantly, you’re sweating, and sweating in a cold humid environment just makes you cold and humid.

But baking potatoes is easy: start fire, throw in potato, remove before scorched. And back at my cave where I have actual furnaces and tongs, baked potatoes are really easy to make. Baked potatoes are like hot rocks. They’re relatively large, they’re solid, and they hold heat a really really long time. When they start to cool down, you eat them.

When I get up in the morning I toss a couple of potatoes into the furnace before I leave. Then i store them in my pockets.. Throughout the day I eat the potatoes (and some meat) and by the end of the day I’m tired and out of potatoes, but still warm.

So although most of my meals consist of ducken prepared in various ways, the food that keeps me warm and nourished while I’m out mining is potatoes.

3 Replies to “Day 291: Grateful for potatoes”

  1. …that helps explain Cornish pasties, too. Little packets of warm food that’ll still be warm six hours later.

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