Variety may be the spice of life, but have you tried a baked potato? In my opinion, a jacket potato with cheese and peas is the perfect meal. It’s tasty, it’s moderately healthy, it’s super-easy and it’s cheap. Well, it used to be cheap until food prices went berserk. Do you know how much one moderate-sized potato costs in my local supermarket? One dollar (81p)! And it’s not just my Philadelphia grocery store where spuds are so expensive: potato prices have spiked around the world, thanks, in part, to extreme weather ravaging crops.
Anyway, this wasn’t meant to be about the food system’s vulnerability to climate crisis. Nor was it meant to be a reflection on how the cost of living is out of control and there doesn’t seem to be any sort of plan, in either the UK or the US, on how food prices can be brought down. (Instead of a plan, there are patronising comments from people such as Ann Widdecombe on how nobody has a God-given right to eat delicacies such as cheese sandwiches.) No, this was meant to be about my passion for potatoes: an extremely versatile vegetable. Much to my wife’s dismay, I would gladly eat a baked potato for dinner every day. To be clear, I have never done this: my streak is probably three days in a row. But if it wouldn’t ruin my marriage, I would.
Is this weird? Am I odd? Do I have an exceptionally bland palate? I don’t think so. Rather, I think I’m in good, albeit dead, company. Apparently, Queen Elizabeth II ate jam sandwiches every day – and it was not because she couldn’t afford cheese sandwiches. A 2021 study commissioned by KitchenAid (a company with an incentive to get people cooking) also found that 59% of British people cycle through the same six meals on a loop. Although, to be fair, most of them weren’t exactly proud of that fact; they were just stuck in a rut. Embrace the rut, I say. Ruts can be very tasty.
