Potato Of The Day Episode 84

I went WAY too hard on the garlic seasoning last night and now I’m just sitting here like a smelly idiot with my gums secreting spiced saliva. Seriously, my mouth is awful right now. There’s nothing that can help it either. I’ve brushed my teeth roughly twenty thousand times, gargled an ocean of mouthwash, and chewed enough gum that the synthetic rubber polymer industry is throwing parties like they’re Big Oil in Dubai, but it’s all been for naught. My breath is still so rancid with garlic, I could French kiss a vampire to death. Not that a vampire would get close to me. No one wants be near me. When you’re friends with Garlic, Garlic is your only friend.

I’m even sweating garlic right now. SWEATING. As in, garlic scent is pumping out my pores, wafting up in the air like intentional sprayed-on man scent. Garlic is probably the third or fourth worst smelling cologne I can imagine (still better than Summer Heat Dog Shit, Bottled Meat Fart, and Fierce By Abercrombie). It’s a subtle pungency. At first, it’s like okay, sure, garlic – that’s a familiar smell. But then it just sits there, and doesn’t go away, and suddenly your stomach starts turning, and your nose starts crinkling, and your sinuses decide they want to cry out in sobs of snot, and long story short, I’m glad I don’t have any closed door meetings today. “Oh…hey… Ben… let’s, uh… reschedule.”

Is this what our sad, little friend Garlic goes through every day of its stinky life? Poor thing. But, also, fuck you, you know? Because you didn’t have to drag me down with you, Garlic. I was down to have a perfectly normal, if not productive (lolz it wasn’t going to be productive) Monday. I was going to eat a lunch that didn’t taste like garlic. I was going to sit around and not smell like much of anything (let alone a human garlic bulb), and I was going to participate in the normal amount of tooth-brushings as recommended by nine out of ten dentists. But no. Instead, I’m chilling with you, Garlic. You and me. Together. In a stank-cubicle. Sweating.

Honestly though, this smelly day? Worth it. Garlic tastes the most dope. It makes every single food taste better. And it’s got a ton of health benefits. Like the most ever. Garlic is basically Dr. House, fighting cancer, preventing Alzheimer’s, lowering cholesterol, and providing whole smorgasbord of other super powered healthy life living benefits. So that’s a pretty fair trade off for being smelly as shit.

But all that being said… tonight, I’m definitely rocking tomato-basil on my chicken.

Potato Of The Day Episode 81

I don’t know why, but I’ve always had a thing for ginger. Yes, ginger, the pickled, pink, filmy stuff on your plate of sushi you always ignore, happily piling on another spicy glob of wasabi instead. Yes, ginger, the tangled piece of tree root you always bypass at the supermarket, pondering its undoubtedly hippie use. Yes, ginger, that sudden burst of taste that clings to your tongue when you sip a Moscow Mule. That ginger.

I’m not entirely certain where my obsession with the root came from. Maybe it’s because I hit puberty right as the Spice Girls were topping out in popularity and reruns of Gilligan’s Island broadcasted late into TV Land’s night, but I never could get the word “ginger” out of my head. It was everywhere around that time. There were the South Park episodes mocking redheads and animated movies with main characters named Ginger (Chicken Run, anyone?  Anyone at all? Oh come on, you guys!). Hell, my mom named one of our cats Ginger. The word was everywhere, but it was just that. A word. I had no sense of the ginger’s food use.

That is, until that day I met a magical old lady.

In my early twenties, many years after ginger had nested deep within my brain, I was in a grocery store feeling rather ill, my stomach bubbling up in an angry wrath at last night’s burrito buffet, when an elderly woman approached me. She stopped in front of me, saying nothing. Her eyes locked onto mine for one instant that lasted an eternity, the silence finally ending when she spoke. “Ginger candies are excellent for an upset stomach, you know.” Then she pointed behind me.

I turned to look where she was pointing and came face to face with an enormous display of ginger candy. I tossed a few in my basket and turned back around. But she was gone. Of course she was gone. She was a magical old lady, she didn’t have time for my bullshit. Anyway, the candy worked, killing off my stomach ache. Lesson learned. Ginger is obviously magic. Always trust old ladies with candy. And eat as many ginger foods as you possibly can. All words I’ll live by until the day I’m abducted by a non-magical, candy-poisoning old lady in a vinyl covered van.

Ginger: If magical old ladies use it, then it’s good enough for me.