Today, after a long day of being on campus studying, walking Science Hill 10 times and generally living at the Press Center, I arrived back at the East Remote parking lot to find my car completely covered in bird poop. Loads of it.
The first question I asked myself was, what kind of bird can generate that much crap? And second, why is it all on my car and nobody else’s?
After coming to terms with the fact that I would need to wash my car for probably the first time in a year, I jumped inside, careful not to touch the gooey bit on my door handle and started home.
Halfway there, another bird pooped on my car. I’m not kidding.
Needless to say, I was more than a little disgusted. Nobody deserves to see that much poop in one day, and I was more than a little sure that my car’s paint was disintegrating off of it. I had been so hungry on the way home, and now I could hardly think about eating without picturing white, gummy, runny bird crap all over my food.
Luckily, there is always one cuisine that seems to bring me out of nausea and back into reality, and that is the potato: fried, baked or even just microwaved. Potatoes are a good, solid food that look nothing like milky egg whites, if you know what I mean.
An interesting thing about the potato is that I’ve had a bag of them for a little over four months and they still haven’t gone bad. That means when it comes to the end of the month and to the tapering end of your allowance, you can have some reserves stored up to get you through. One bag of potatoes is generally less than $10 at your normal grocery store. Just buy them, forget about them, and then remember them again in a few months and you’ll be glad you did.
You can feel pretty good about buying bagged potatoes from the market not only because they are inexpensive and last a long time, but also because they are high in nutritional value.
A single potato contains no fat, little sodium and about 7 grams of protein. It’s also bursting with fiber, about 25 percent or the equivalent of your daily intake, which seems amazing since they are only a little over 250 calories each. Potatoes make a sizeable addition to dinner or sometimes for me, become dinner all by themselves.
The best ways to cook potatoes are by baking them and then filling them with butter and cheese or sour cream, by cutting and then frying them, or by boiling them with veggies for a soft, tender texture.
I know it’s not the classiest thing to say, but the next time your crappy day gets the best of you, find comfort in a simple bag of potatoes, and I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.
