Saving the Soul of a Shriveled Sweet Potato

I have become quite the Betty Crocker—the gluten-free, vegetarian version—since I changed my diet 16 years ago. Gradually at first, now I make everything I eat. Nothing fancy, but what I make is, for my taste, the best can’t-find-it-anywhere fare around.

Since the pandemic began, I have added potatoes to my culinary repertoire. Sweet and regular, home fried, hashed, baked, and mashed, organic when available, I’ve eaten potatoes almost every day for the past year. Potatoes became a “thing” for me out a process of elimination. Having so many food intolerances—no wheat, no meat (but I do eat canned fish), no soy, no nuts or seeds, no eggs, no dairy—there just wasn’t much else to eat beyond my traditional steamed vegetables (organic broccoli, cauliflower, peas, carrots, corn made in huge batches, fixed each day either Indian style, Asian style with soy-free sauces, Italian style or plain), split pea soup, bean soup and a Romaine lettuce, green AND red cabbage, olive oil, rice and balsamic vinegar salad, and Udi’s gluten-free bread.

Back to potatoes. I keep a big ceramic bowl loaded with potatoes. On this day I plucked a sweet potato I bought from Trader Joe’s a few weeks earlier, which was hidden underneath newer purchases. It was really looking bad—wrinkled dried out skin, splotchy. I looked at it, shook my head, asked for forgiveness, and tossed it in the trash. Then I reached for a regular potato to make home fries (my home fries are more like butchered cubes and slivers of cubes; I just go hari-kari on the potato until it looks uniformly un-uniform). As I suspected, the spud was too small and there was not enough.

Not wanting to slice into another potato, I began to think about the sweet potato I had trashed. Maybe there was some part of it I could use, for it just looked bad, it wasn’t rotten or mushy. So, I fished it out, took a peeler to it, scraping hard against the ridged, wrinkly skin, and lo and behold, the orangy-flesh underneath looked okay. I chopped half of it and added it to the regular potatoes. I then poured some olive oil in the pan, added some chopped onion, and after a few minutes added the potatoes with twists of pepper and Himalayan salt. The key to cooking potatoes to an eventual crispness is to leave them on that first go round for a good 8-9 minutes on medium heat, then 5-6 minutes each time you stir it around. 20 minutes later I had a new masterpiece. A masterpiece! It was so delicious I made it again today.

And then I thought, how close this potato came to waste through no fault of its own, something completely beyond its control. How unfair! Relegated by the world (me) to a hopeless fate of futility, its life on earth amounting to nothing but a few shekels for those who traded in it—the famer to the store to me—all came to naught, to no good purpose. Its destiny (bringing nourishment and pleasure to its consumer) wasted. Like the proverbial book judged by its cover, the potato was victimized by its true essence—its soul—being judged by its shriveled skin.

This realization immediately suggested comparisons to people. I mused about how society seems so often to give up on people whose outward appearance screams worthlessness. Many of us are too ready to trash fellow humans based on appearances. We make a subjective and completely erroneous view of their true value, their true potential, and their true equal claim to the realization of their destiny due all humans by our Creator.

This will, I hope, help me to be on guard to catch myself if (or maybe, when) I might be apt to do this in the future.  Every person is a son or daughter of a mother, and a child of God.  We may have to dig deeper to uncover their true, hidden value.  Who knows what genes they were born with, what upbringing, or lack thereof, they have suffered, what traumas they have faced, or still face?  We’ve just gotta give more people more chances to flower.  The world awaits the hidden treasure unlocked by their fruition. 

POSTSCRIPT:  I also thought of an associated reason I was too easily ready to throw this potato away.  And that was my lack of appreciation.  I have so much, and I live in a land of plenty, even excess (although this was tested this past year when grocery shelves were thinning, and worry was mounting) that it was nothing to toss what turned out to be a perfectly good source of sustenance and pure gastronomic joy.  Those who starve, who have nothing, who live in a land where empty shelves and pockets are the norm, this shriveled potato would have been savored, never so carelessly rejected. 

Salvation seems as easy as 1-2-3:  1) Will, if not feel, true love for the other; the more distasteful, the more the love and the quest to truly DO GOOD for them; 2) Cultivate gratitude and appreciation; and 3) Honor the truth, revere reality.  

Take a sad song and make it better!