Rose Finn Potatoes

Looks like dinner to me.

There's been a lot of discussion over on chowhound lately about the cost of sustainably-grown, organic, local food. I thought I would share this picture from a few weeks ago, when some friends of mine took me for a much-needed day in the country. We stopped at a farm stand, and I bought these beautiful Rose Finn fingerling potatoes. They had a pretty pink blush when raw, which unfortunately went away with cooking. But they were delicious nonetheless - very tender and moist, with a delicate skin and a strong potato flavor. Most supermarket potatoes don't taste like anything at all.

I ate this bowl for dinner one night, because I've got Irish blood in me and I don't think there's anything strange about potatoes for dinner. Sure, potatoes alone might be a little, well, carb-o-rific, but it's a fallacy to believe every meal needs to be well-balanced. Your diet needs to be well-balanced, overall, but each individual meal need not be. I think that the well-balanced meal trap can be a cause of overeating among people who generally eat fairly healthfully. I can find myself cooking an orange vegetable for dinner even though I've already fixed a green vegetable, meat, starch and a mixed salad. Though an orange vegetable is generally a good thing in and of itself, in total I just end up with too much food.

So, back to the potatoes. Not well-balanced, admittedly. But full of vitamins and fiber, and - when touched with a little butter, a little milk and some black pepper - delicious. I consume potatoes like this by mashing each one with a fork just once, then taking a bite. Smush, eat, smush, eat. It's extremely comforting to eat like this, and the result is something somewhere between mashed potatoes and plain boiled.

Since this meal consists almost entirely of potatoes, they have to be top-notch. Mediocre spuds will leave me yearning for something more.

These top-notch potatoes cost $2.00/pound, which is a good bit more than double the supermarket price. Of course, I don't think I ate a whole pound for dinner. Maybe $1.25 worth? Add a few cents for butter and milk (organic, both) and a 75 cent organic apple for dessert and at the most my entirely pleasurable and nutritious weeknight dinner was $2.25. I wonder if the organic-and-local-costs-too-much crowd could say the same?