Comments on Cranky Fitness: You Say Potato, I Say The Hell With It

Hey this is really nice information. I was looking...

2010-05-31T06:06:44.156-04:00

Hey this is really nice information. I was looking for something similar like this. Thanks for this useful information.

Nancy-- YES!!!!! I figured the reference was too...

2009-08-12T17:54:36.710-04:00

Nancy--

YES!!!!!

I figured the reference was too obscure (I think maybe it was an old James Thurber cartoon) so it's really a kick that you caught that.

I love New Yorker cartoons!

Crabby, I just have to ask, is the title of this p...

2009-08-12T12:48:02.900-04:00

Crabby, I just have to ask, is the title of this post drawing on an ANCIENT New Yorker cartoon, tag line "I say it's spinach, and I say the hell with it!"
brought back some childhood memories of the New Yorker cartoon book that made me laugh out loud.

And for the record, love me some 'taters, but yep they are a starch & they're nutritionally subversive without a doubt.

I only use them occasionally in soups or vegetaria...

2009-08-11T16:41:44.082-04:00

I only use them occasionally in soups or vegetarian dishes - mashed potatoes make a great topping for a veggie bake. Or once in a while I'd cut them up and dry roast them to add to my salad - it goes particularly well with a creamy dressing.

potatoes are yummy. my favorite way to eat them is...

2009-08-11T09:26:41.095-04:00

potatoes are yummy. my favorite way to eat them is fried in ghee. a really good recipe is Aloo Gobhi, Curried cauliflower and potatoes.

1 pound cauliflower(fresh or frozen,floretted)
2 medium size potatoes, cubed or speared
1 fresh chili, or chilipowder to taste
1/2 tsp ginger powder
1 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp mustard seeds
oil
2 ripe tomatoes, diced or quartered
1/2 tsp turmeric
2 tsps ground coriander
1/2 tsp garam masala
1 tsp brown sugar
salt

combin chili,ginger, cumin and mustard in a small bowl. pour enough oil to cover the botom of the pan(i use a 5 qt dutch oven).heat, then add the bowl of spices. when mustard seeds pop, add potatoes and cauliflower, and stir fry, til they brown a bit.then add the rest of the ingredients. stir well, cover, and cook on low, stirring occasionally til the veggies are tender.

that is my youngest son's favorite food.

I don't eat them very often, but when I do, it is ...

2009-08-10T22:36:19.219-04:00

I don't eat them very often, but when I do, it is the healthy version...not fried. I will choose potatoes before bread if I have that option. Suprisingly, one of my favortie websites, World's Healthiest Foods (whfoods.org), has potatoes on the healthy vegetable list. But I do agree with you, most of us don't need too many of them! And we need a lot more leafy greens and "real" vegetables. :-)

what can I say....love love potatoes....loved this...

2009-08-10T22:21:16.313-04:00

what can I say....love love potatoes....loved this post...wendys has a great potatoe with broc and cheese for 250 cals! thanks cranky

Did not read Clovis Crawfish and Friends. Maybe th...

2009-08-10T22:13:21.662-04:00

Did not read Clovis Crawfish and Friends. Maybe that came out after I got too old to read it.

If I were going to eat a potato, I'd eat just that for the meal but I'd put real veges inside, maybe sauteed mushrooms and a dab of sour cream.

I never thought of putting cheese and etc. on a ball point pen. Great idea. And thrifty too.

Gee whiz...I had not thought of the briar patch in...

2009-08-10T22:07:01.851-04:00

Gee whiz...I had not thought of the briar patch in a least a few weeks.
I think people still read books, right? Did they remove the briar patch books? Banned books?

Speaking of books, if you read The Botany of Desire, Pollan spends a lot of the book discussing the potato. At one time, McDonalds was serving potatoes created by Monsanto that weren't vegetables, or starches. They were considered a pesticide.

http://www.mindfully.org/GE/Monsanto-Dumps-Potatoe.htm

i love potatoes especially in fry form. i know, i...

2009-08-10T21:26:58.900-04:00

i love potatoes especially in fry form. i know, it's bad, but i'm really trying to like sweet potatoes so i can eat them in fry form and not feel so bad, lol. :)

I am seriously going to have to take notes or book...

2009-08-10T21:23:35.519-04:00

I am seriously going to have to take notes or bookmark this post or something because of all these great potato ideas!

And Essbee, many of my relatives on my mother's side hail from Louisiana--perhaps that's why I got the whole briar patch thing growing up. (Also, I was the only kid in my California neighborhood had a couple storybooks about "Clovis Crawfish and his friends.") So maybe you can make room in that handbasket for me, too!

Never met a potato I didn't love, love, love. My ...

2009-08-10T20:36:56.199-04:00

Never met a potato I didn't love, love, love. My stock started up in Northern Europe, so I blame the ancestors. I've been known to have three kinds of 'taters on the Thanksgiving table.

That said, I rarely eat them outside of special occasions, due to the starch thing. Good trick though: use pico de gallo (or other salsa, in a pinch) as your slather of choice on a baker and you get the good side of the spud and a veggie boost as well. Yum. I often use pico de gallo instead of salad dressing, too. Yay low-cal tastiness.

Loves me a sweet potato, too, but if you come near my sweets with marshmallows, brown sugar, maple syrup, etc. I will hurt you. They're SWEET potatoes, people...why add sugar? That's just psycho.

Fabulous mashed potato sub: pureed sweets (or carrots) and parsnips. Dated a boy whose mother made mashed parsnips all the time...called them "fluffy nips." Okay, she was a little weird. (So was he; note past tense "dated".)

Oh, and love those little purple guys, too. I had a garden in my last home ("I had a farm in Africa, at the foot of the Ingong hills..."), and I planted heirloom taters. My faves were the All-Blues and the Rose Finn Apples. I'd pluck them out at thumb size and roast them in salt.

Oh, and I spent my earliest years in Louisiana, so I know all about the Brier Patch. Since I'm white and can do the whole thing from memory in full dialect, I am surely going to hell. (Wait a minute, where did this handbasket come from?)

You say potato, I say pototoe! I've recently g...

2009-08-10T20:30:07.949-04:00

You say potato, I say pototoe!

I've recently gotten into eating sweet potatoes...delicious!

Red potatoes are also better than their brown coun...

2009-08-10T20:03:51.905-04:00

Red potatoes are also better than their brown counterparts, and you can find cute little red ones that are easier to portion control. Other things to add to mashed potatoes include turnips, rutabaga, and parsnips.

I use to eat potatoes for lunch all the time with ...

2009-08-10T18:58:18.486-04:00

I use to eat potatoes for lunch all the time with broccoli and a little ketchup. It was great... would never consider a veggie though.
Broccoli- yes. Potato-No

Mmm, potatoes! I love spuds... unfortunately, the ...

2009-08-10T18:53:51.869-04:00

Mmm, potatoes! I love spuds... unfortunately, the market is too far away to get good ones, so I rarely have them. Can't stand sweet potatoes.

I've actually been around discussions about this v...

2009-08-10T18:47:46.420-04:00

I've actually been around discussions about this very thing and I'm amazed at how voices can raise over this topic. I see what you're saying though. It's like those people who feel like they can eat ANYTHING they want as long as they have a salad with it.

I should NOT read these comments after coming home...

2009-08-10T17:54:02.116-04:00

I should NOT read these comments after coming home hungry from work. Now I'm STARVING! So many tempting potato alternatives!

And as usual, you guys totally have me laughing!

And I've never actually seen Song of the South--just always heard the story as a little kid of Bre'r rabbit pleading with the mean fox not to be thrown in the briar patch, which is exactly where the Bre'r rabbit really wanted to be.

Hey, literary types, is there a more current analogy one can use for that situation?

Those crazy botantists would actually tell you the...

2009-08-10T17:18:50.768-04:00

Those crazy botantists would actually tell you there's no such things as a vegetable- brown potatoes are technically tubers and the rest (sweet, red, peruvian purples) are all modified root systems.
I like potatoes an average amount, but ocassionally get scared of carbs (when I read too much of Mark Sisson) but I'm still going to stick up for them. They've got fiber, folate, potassium, all sorts of good stuff. No, they aren't the low-calorie nutritional powerhouse that a lot of vegetables (I mean, fruits, stalks, leaves, seeds, and roots) are, but for a starch with dinner you could do a lot worse than a baked potato.

I love potatoes! But I don't eat them often (excep...

2009-08-10T16:40:41.833-04:00

I love potatoes! But I don't eat them often (except sweet potatoes) because I'm too cheap to buy meat, and I never know what else to eat with potatoes besides meat in a meal.

I'm a big fan of mashed cauliflower mixed with laughing cow cheese, garlic powder, and black pepper. YUM!

...until this moment it never occurred to me that there were racial undertones in that particular fairytale. Damn. That rabbit always seemed so cute!

a friend of mine in middle school had a bootlegged...

2009-08-10T16:05:46.880-04:00

a friend of mine in middle school had a bootlegged copy of "song of the south" on vhs from japan. i borrowed it and loved it. i saw it in the theaters once back in the early 90s when it had a super limited release of like a week.

copies are still to be found on ebay ... but super expensive and not for our region of dvd/vhs players. boo.

as for potatoes, i <3 them but do NOT consider them a vegetable. i don't mind sweet potatoes, but brandon hates them so we stick to the regular guys for the most part.

i do want to try the cauliflower trick in mashed potatoes though ...

yeah- def not a veggie. and neither is corn! its a...

2009-08-10T16:02:00.150-04:00

yeah- def not a veggie. and neither is corn! its a grain people!!!

You are sooo funny!! I laughed out loud. You are s...

2009-08-10T15:48:01.749-04:00

You are sooo funny!! I laughed out loud. You are so sarcastic. But you are right. How many child care workers count potatoes like a side of tator tots a vegetable?
love this funny post. I also liked your ideas to spice things up. Actually sweet potatoes are a prized carbohydrate for body builders, even more so than potatoes. T
he nice thing about potatoes is that of all of your possible carbs of choice, they contain the least amount of calories per ounce at 22 calories an ounce when compared to whole wheat bread, brown rice and other types of good carbs.

Love the potato. Any color, and I love 'em baked ...

2009-08-10T15:25:36.481-04:00

Love the potato. Any color, and I love 'em baked or roasted best.
But plain potatoes as a veggie? Can't quite get behind that concept.

Unbelievable that we try to justify eating potatoe...

2009-08-10T14:54:01.098-04:00

Unbelievable that we try to justify eating potatoes by calling them vegetables. It's like... a cantaloupe is a squash but is considered a fruit and a yellow squash is considered a veggie.

Right now, because I working on being gluten-free, I'm using potatoes as not only filler, but in place of bread. So... like today for lunch, I had french fries with grated cheese and bacon with ranch dressing. And a bowl of fruit. And a scrambled egg. But still, it was the main portion of my meal because it's hard to find gluten-free foods in a restaurant.

Ok, I've rambled.

Vee at http://www.veegettinghealthy.blogspot.com