Potatoes

♫ ♫ One potato

Two potatoes
Three potatoes
Four!
Five potatoes
Six potatoes
Seven potatoes
More! ♫

For the last couple of days, I've been craving potatoes.  Baked, mashed, french fried, hash browned, O'Brian'ed, even raw.  I just can't get enough potatoes.  I see them when I close my eyes.  They are sometimes drenched in gravy, or maybe butter.  Or how about smothered in Ketchup...yeah, that's the ticket.  

Ohhhh, and potato chips.  Lately I like the Kettle Chips with sea salt and vinegar.  Although the New York Cheddars are up at the top of that list, too.  I like the ones with salt and pepper as well, but sometimes I get a bag of those that are a tiny bit over peppered and I end up with severe indigestion.  Life is hard, but short...so I eat the dang things anyway.  My fruit flavored, calcium enriched tablets help ease that pain away.

I remember as a kid, mom would say that raw potatoes were bad for you and you should not eat them that way.  I confess, I would sneak a slice or two raw when she was not looking, I liked them.  However, she said they would make a person sick...or maybe you'd be poisoned...so, tonight I have decided to check into this myth, and in keeping with truth in blogging this is what's out there on the net...and as we all know...if it's on the web, it must be true.

Here is what I found.

                                       Is eating raw potatoes unhealthy?

No, raw potatoes are not toxic, with the exception of the green parts. These may contain
toxic levels of solanin. Raw potatoes, however, may cause flatulence in many people.

Eating one or two raw potatoes will not harm you, more will not kill you, but it will not be
digested and will trouble your stomach.

Not necessarily you can eat raw potatoes. They don't taste great..and also potatoes are a member of the Solanacae which is a plant family known to have solanine (tomatoes, eggplant, deadly nightshade are in the same category). Solanine is not really very good to be eating it is a potentially toxic alkaloid. It tends to be at its highest concentration of any green parts of the potato --but not necessarily...In any case cooking a potato destroys the solanine.

Then, I went to You Tube, and there was a young man holding a raw potato, and he proceeded to talk about the healthy aspects of them, and to prove he was not going to die, ate a whole, raw, potato.  He mentioned in advance they tasted like dirt, and that we needn't ask how he knew, except to say he had personal knowledge what dirt tasted like.  

Needless to say, it turned out to be funny, especially toward the end when he shoved what was left of it into his mouth all at once, nearly choked, but was none the less determined to show that..."real  men eat raw potatoes".

This is probably way more information than you ever wanted to know about potatoes.  You are welcome...who else but a rambling old woman would take this amount of time to bore you all to death researching potatoes.  By the way, I think I'm over my potato addiction.  It's was something about the dirt, the toxin and possible flatulence that turned me off.