Brushed potatoes

Like many people, one of our standard dishes for Australia Day and Independence Day is potato salad. When the Scientist and I did the grocery shopping on Monday, we found something novel at the supermarket: brushed potatoes. It’s not that we never see brushed potatoes in the stores but it’s pretty uncommon. The brushed potatoes were about half the price of anything else there so I got a bunch of them to use for today. This morning Game Fanatic and I were at the store picking up a few extra things we needed and he commented that we didn’t have that many potatoes this time so I asked if he thought we should get more. He wouldn’t commit to an answer on this question. But he did comment that he was bothered by the fact we had these dirty potatoes that needed to be washed. Apparently it’s an alien concept to him.

Thinking about it, for his whole life, he’s seen potatoes sold in a “washed” state and hardly ever seen potatoes in any other way. When I was growing up, potatoes were generally what is now called brushed and sold in large paper sacks with some sort of netting inside the paper to support the weight. Somewhere along the way, the idea of washed potatoes took hold and now it seems to be the standard. And they usually are sold in plastic bags rather than paper. I don’t know whether either is better for storage but I’d guess paper might edge out plastic just a bit. Getting back to that massive price difference, are we really so lazy that we are willing to pay a premium for “washed” potatoes instead of doing it ourselves?