i believe my uni education truly off-the-scale awesome: how many people, apart from learning about academic rigour and techniques, as well as cooking, cleaning, social relations, etc. get to make an andean freeze dried potato?
its actually a real assignment we'll have to bring to class upon completion; its making involved freezing a potato, thawing, squeezing it, freezing it again, thawing, squeezing, ad infinitum till there is no longer a difference between the frozen and the thawed versions of the potato.
this is a time-honoured potato preservation technique from the andean highlands: used to preserve the plenty in times of good harvests, and to stave off hunger in times of bad. (to use the potato again you have to rehydrate it)
so, to widen my historical understanding, i find myself in my kitchen squeezing a mushy potato into the sink, wondering why i had to be ambitious and but the hugest one from tesco. (organic grown, as well, for the *authentic* touch)
i'm really quite tickled by the whole affair, and am going to name my potato (chern suggests 'Spud'; this other girl in my seminar was going to name hers 'Andy') and bring it home. and hoping my housemates read the mote ive stuck on the fridge begging them not to mistake it for something rotten and throw it away. if you were wondering about what it feels like to be squeezing a potato on a cold winter's night... you'd be glad to know that, like all exercise, it warms you up. the potato juice squirts in small jets out of the potato's eyes first, then the skin sorta flakes off and it gets easier to squeeze. of course, i'd own i have an advantage here, having spent many a long afternoon squeezing cucumbers for achar. anyway th potato's really reduced in size, and i'm really quite pleased with myself! i only hope my extra efforts can serve to cover for the time i'm going to spend away during reading week; apparently you're supposed to have squeezed the potato about 12 times (omg) before it is finally and definitively freeze-dried.
perhaps our tutor was intending this exercise as a sort of surrogate stress-relief activity- a premodern stress-ball, if you may. or as a be- thankful- you're- not- a- poor- villager- squeezing- potatoes- all- day- and- FINISHYOURFOODUNGRATEFULWRETCH kinda thing. or as an exercise in historical reconstruction. at any rate, ive spent half an hour at the sink squeezing that darned thing!
all you who are taking the o's... be glad you're not squeezing potatoes.
mellie contemplated 7:00 AM
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