Tag Archives: maybe you didn’t know

Something I should have never admitted: powdered potatoes.

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I did it. It was me. I promised myself I never would. I scoffed at the idea. But then, standing in my kitchen after cleaning the counter of rotted potato juice, damning boxed Pasta Roni to hell since we’ve been eating it once or twice a week lately, and wondering what on EARTH would fill my ever-hungry stomach, I realized it was time.

To make the bag-o-potato that Jeff had purchased once upon the time he claimed was delicious. I reasoned with myself–it was here, I shouldn’t waste, there ARE children starving in Africa, Asia, South America, and probably down the block from me. They are edible, and they have potatoes in them. Plus, as we are moving in a few weeks, I shouldn’t allow them into our new home. Right? We should just use them up…now. RIGHT?

bag_potatoes

This is the bag. The bag full of offensive powdered-potato. But I had exhausted my other options for sides. I had no choice. So I opened the bag, to investigate.
insidebag

The inside seemed OK. It was powdered, but smelled like potato. I wasn’t sure how large the potatoes would get, so I had to guesstimate which bowl size I would use. This one seemed to be the right size. I wasn’t sure how large powdered potatoes got. But I have seen those amazing meals they give to people in the army, when you add water and it becomes so hot you can’t even hold it. So I knew there was magical things that could happen when it says “Just add water.” Like sea monkeys. Just add water, and soon you have a family.

inbowl_potatoes

Anyways, I waited for the water to boil. I made a list of reasons I was justified in my head, and I when the water boiled I poured it into the bowl. The bowl, of course, DID burn my hand, because I wasn’t thinking that maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to hold said bowl as I poured the water. But that’s another story. Then I poured the potato powder in and Voila!–

Potatoes.alldone_potatoes

I must say, they were not as bad as I thought they were going to be. I guess I have to take them off the “Absolutely not” list and put them onto the “Only in an Emergency” list.

Dually noted.

Itch!

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My boss today told me that she was very itchy because she has some poison ivy. I told her what my doctor had told me once: that itching was the lowest form of pain, and she should take one acetaminophen (Tylenol) or one ibuprofen. It’d curb the itching, and save the pain of scabs later on. I thought this little bit of wisdom was a gem: it has always worked for me. I figured it’d be something interesting to blog about, until I did some research to prove it was true and allow my blog readers to decide for themselves. And I discovered it isn’t true-it’s not a form of pain at all! But, what I found is worth sharing.

I quote, from the article: “But how, exactly, itch works has been a puzzle. For most of medical history, scientists thought that itching was merely a weak form of pain. Then, in 1987, the German researcher H. O. Handwerker and his colleagues used mild electric pulses to drive histamine, an itch-producing substance that the body releases during allergic reactions, into the skin of volunteers. As the researchers increased the dose of histamine, they found that they were able to increase the intensity of itch the volunteers reported, from the barely appreciable to the “maximum imaginable.” Yet the volunteers never felt an increase in pain. The scientists concluded that itch and pain are entirely separate sensations, transmitted along different pathways.”

Here is a link. Who knew!

The Itch, by Atul Gawande