Making a Mountain Out of a Potato Hill

A few days ago I found a great deal on a 10-pound bag of baking potatoes at Save A Lot. Huh. I guess maybe that's how they get away with that name. With a Pony who loves baked potatoes, and plans of my impending pot of cabbage/sausage/potato already on the back burner, I snagged a bag.

The brand name was Biggins. Not the Al Bundy Big 'Uns. Biggins. Here's a photo of the last one, and the bag.

These potatoes were perfect for baking, and for peeling. Great big potatoes mean less elbow grease. Less surface area to be cleared than many small potatoes. We science teachers notice things like that when we're shopping. Actually, it's because we're kind of lazy, all about doing less work. By the time I was done slicing and dicing for my main course to last us a few days, I had only three of those giant bakers left for The Pony's enjoyment. Yesterday I was down to two. With the snow storm rolling in Saturday night, I decided my household might need more Biggins to get us through. You can eat potatoes uncooked if the power goes off, or bake them on the Weber grill. I swear, as my blog readership is my witness, I'll never chomp on a limp carrot like Scarlett O'Hara. Frankly, my dear, I think Katie Scarlett would have given up Ashley Wilkes for a Biggin.

I headed off to town to foist leftovers on my mom, and to pick up some more of those fantastic potatoes. I knew just what to look for. I whipped into the only parking spot available at the Save A Lot/Dollar Store/Subway/Coin Laundry mini-mall. I was on a tight time schedule to meet my mom in the next town at Walmart, she who refused to wait home like a sensible woman, for her Five-Dollar Daughter to deliver her scraps. I commandeered a cart and headed past the impulse purchase shelf of leftover Christmas candies, past the risers of bananas, to the special potato risers. Right where I found my Biggins a few days ago.

What was this? Just as I went to unbag my Biggins with my eyes in order to get the best assortment...I noticed that there were no Biggins. These were Huge 'Uns. IN 20-POUND BAGS! I had no need for 20 pounds of potatoes. But they were only five dollars for that bag of huge baking potatoes. I went on down to the regular potato corner. Oh, there were smaller bags. But they were smaller potatoes. I wanted the big bakers. So I backed up my cart and started perusing the offerings. I felt those Huge 'Uns to see if they were firm. Peeped through the thin plastic. I started to lift a satisfactory bag to my cart. Do you have any idea how heavy 20 pounds of potatoes are? THEY WEIGH 20 POUNDS!

I kind of dragged that bag over to the child-seat part of my cart. It was almost in when it happened. The Great Potato Avalanche of  '14. Have you ever tried to stop a mountain of potatoes from obeying the law of gravity? I know there were more than ten bags on the left, and more than ten bags on the right. Both columns of 20-pound bags started to slide toward me. And the floor. That's over 400 pounds of potatoes! Do you know how many hands it takes to put a 20-pound bag of potatoes in your cart, then stop over twenty 20-pound bags of Huge 'Uns from sliding off a slanted wooden produce rack? Let me just tell you...MORE THAN TWO!

But I didn't have more than two arms. A roving gang of flannel-shirted mountain men had convened a morning meeting over by the onion/lettuce alcove. They did not seem to notice my distress. One was entertaining the others with his plans for the day. "I'm a-gonna toss some wood into the back of the truck for weight." He looked around for a box of vegetables to use as a spittoon for his juicy chaw. Yet still they ignored my predicament. Chivalry is indeed dead. As Progressive Flo would say, "These are troubling times in the kingdom."

I flipped my own 20-pound Huge 'Uns end over end into the cart, like an unwieldy, lumpy Slinky. I tried to flop the first slider over onto a couple of red plastic crates of onions. No. When one end stopped, the other kept going, then pulled the first end back onto the slope. I tried that three times. I'm a slow learner. In the meantime, on the right-hand column, I kept pushing back the bottom bag when it was near the edge. That did not slow any bags behind it. Finally, I could shove it back no more. I propped the leading end on some packages of peanuts in the shell. It worked! That bottom bag balance precariously, thanks to the peanut shells which absorbed their weight. I'm sure somebody's gonna buy peanuts in the shell, and think, "Hey, that's great! These are already cracked."

After huffing and puffing for nigh on five minutes, grabbing that left-hand bottom bag and lifting it halfway up the column, I got it wedged just right. I was exhausted. I pushed my cart quickly around a display of bottled water and headed lickety-split to the checkout. I did NOT want to be around when gravity declared victory. Of course one of my former students was working the register. "Hi. How was your break? Did you find everything you need?"

"Yes. Great. I just stopped in for a few potatoes."

I had to push that Huge 'Uns behemoth out to T-Hoe in a cart, and flop the bag over the bumper into T-Hoe's rear. When I got to Walmart just as Mom was arriving, I told her out the window, "I've got a special surprise for you!" She climbed in to talk a few minutes. Not only was she overjoyed to get her cabbage/sausage/potato delight, and fried rice, and sweet-and-sour sauce, and a third-of-a-head of cabbage, and a giant baking potato, and three-and-a-half corn muffins...she delighted in my offer to fill a bag with potatoes from the back of T-Hoe. She even found a special treat, a heart-shaped potato.

"Just a symbol of my love for you, Mom."

She nodded. And left without giving me any money. But she did declare, before she drove out of sight, "Thank you for sharing that potato story with me. I'll be laughing out loud all the way home. People will think I'm crazy."

I guess the apple really doesn't fall far from the tree.