The Potato Show
Consider the potato.
The typical potato is not all that pretty. They can be beige and lumpy, dusty and speckled, and on top of that, they even sprout alien-like tentacles. Further, no one really knows what to make of the potato. Is it a vegetable, or so starchy that we should really consider it a grain?
It’s time for answers. The Outside/In team ventures into the potato patch and presents three stories on this “fifth most important crop worldwide.”
Part 1: An artist vaults the humble potato to luxury status.
Part 2: A deliberation on the potato’s true place in the food pyramid – or, that is, on “MyPlate.”
Part 3: When his mom was diagnosed with cancer, producer Felix Poon’s dad found a way to help her: fresh-squeezed potato juice.
Featuring Laila Gohar, Kristina Peterson, and Paul Poon.
Producer Felix Poon’s dad, Paul, gives a demonstration of his top-of-the-line juicer. Credit: Felix Poon.
Laila Gohar at her potato party. Credit: Adrianna Glaviano.
LINKS
Laila Gohar wrote about her potato party, and the Marie-Antoinette-era rebrand of the potato, in her column for the Financial Times.
For more details on the French pharmacist who transformed the potato’s image, check out this Atlas Obscura piece.
For a vinegary and vegetable-forward potato salad, Justine recommends this recipe from the great Deb Perelman.
An installation at the launch of Gohar World. Credit: Adrianna Glaviano.
Taylor recommends these vegan Bombay potatoes and peas (this is the closest recipe he could find online to the book recipe he uses at home).
Felix recommends trying Sichuan stir-fried potatoes from an authentic Sichuan Chinese restaurant if you haven’t had it before, and then give this Woks of Life recipe a try.
If you find yourself near the U.S.-Mexico border, Nate recommends you try some carne asada fries. Here’s a good recipe if you want to try them at home.
CREDITS
Host: Nate Hegyi
Reported and produced by Nate Hegyi, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon
Mixed by Nate Hegyi, Justine Paradis, and Felix Poon.
Editing by Executive Producer Taylor Quimby
Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Audio
Our intern is Catherine Hurley.
Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Patrick Patrikios.
Our theme music is by Breakmaster Cylinder.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio
Submit a question to the “Outside/Inbox.” We answer queries about the natural world, climate change, sustainability, and human evolution. You can send a voice memo to outsidein@nhpr.org or leave a message on our hotline, 1-844-GO-OTTER (844-466-8837).
Check out Laila’s Gohar’s Instagram for more photos of her work, including more tattooed potatoes. Courtesy of Laila Gohar.
Audio Transcript
Note: Episodes of Outside/In are made as pieces of audio, and some context and nuance may be lost on the page. Transcripts are generated using a combination of speech recognition software and human transcribers, and may contain errors.
Justine Paradis: Hey Nate. Hey Felix.
Nate Hegyi: Hey Justine.
Justine Paradis: If you can humor me for a moment, let’s pretend we work in advertising. We’re in Mad Men. How would you describe the brand identity… of the potato?
Felix Poon: [00:00:17] It's fucking Delicious.
MUSIC: Capering, Blue Dot Sessions
Justine Paradis: [00:00:19] Oh. Felix, I don't think I've ever heard you swear.
Felix Poon: [00:00:28] What! Uh. But it is. [00:00:30] It's like. I don't know, there's something about it that's so satisfying. Especially when it's fried.
Nate Hegyi: [00:00:34] It feels deeply. It feels both deeply American, but also global, like so many different places on Earth, rely on potatoes and have created potato dishes. That's a terrible tagline.
Felix Poon: [00:00:49] Yeah. That is, this is a little academic sounding.
Nate Hegyi: [00:00:53] “Potatoes: So many places around the world rely on them for your favorite dishes. Potatoes.”
Justine Paradis: [00:00:59] I feel [00:01:00] like you could also say that part of the reputation is that they're plain or boring.
Felix Poon: [00:01:05] They, they are kind of.
Nate Hegyi: [00:01:06] Yeah, they're lumpy and brown and–
Felix Poon: [00:01:09] It’s very humble. I mean, because it also just it comes out of the ground, out of dirt.
Justine Paradis: [00:01:13] They’re kind of the bedrock of fast food.
Felix Poon: [00:01:16] They are. You can't have a hamburger without fries.
MUSIC OUT
Justine Paradis: [00:01:26] So I think we've established that the potato is a is a staple [00:01:30] and much beloved tuber.
Felix Poon: [00:01:33] Yes, tuber.
Justine Paradis: [00:01:34] But this was not always the case during the reign of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette in France, people in France avoided the potato, considering it disgusting and poisonous.
Nate Hegyi: Oh!
MUSIC IN: Trois Gnoissiemes, Blue Dot Sessions
Justine Paradis: But at the time, Europe was also going through a famine, and this one French pharmacist realized that potatoes could be a solution. They could help feed the masses, but they would need a rebrand first. So he planted a field [00:02:00] of potatoes in Paris and hired these fancy guards to protect them. He threw potato centered dinner parties for attendees that included Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.
Felix Poon: [00:02:11] Oh my gosh, I would have loved to go to a dinner party like that. It sounds amazing.
Justine Paradis: [00:02:16] And he even got Marie Antoinette to wear potato flowers in her hair.
Nate Hegyi: [00:02:19] Oh, that, that's a good ad campaign right there. Just get the rich and the famous to start eating taters.
MUSIC OUT
Today, there are people who are reconsidering the potato. People like Laila Gohar.
Laila Gohar: [00:00:11] My name is Laila Gohar. I live in New York City, and I am an artist that works primarily with food.
In the world of art and fashion, Laila Gohar is a bit of a darling.
MUSIC IN: Coulis Coulis, Blue Dot Sessions
Like, Drake called her the “Björk of food,” famously.
Nate Hegyi: Wow. Drake.
Justine Paradis: Drake. Her food shows up in art galleries and museums, or at parties for high end clients, like think Hermes, Sotheby’s, Prada.
Laila Gohar: [00:01:15] I'm not a chef per se, that works in a restaurant… Generally speaking, I make really whimsical, uh, it's been described as surreal work using food that causes people to talk to one another and to be sometimes a little bit confused and intrigued…
I’ll tell you, I’ll give you some examples.
Felix Poon: Okay.
Justine: For one party, she built a pyramid of shrimp, maybe 12-feet tall,
Felix Poon: Whoa. Oh my gosh.
Justine: like a giant termite mound, layers of rosy pink crustaceans interspersed with stripes of pink roses.
On another occasion, party guests arrived to find a mortadella, an Italian sausage, the size of a telephone pole… which had to be lifted by crane into the building.
Felix: Whoa.
Nate Hegyi: [00:03:49] That is a lot of pig meat.
Justine: That's a lot.
Felix Poon: [00:03:54] I want to try a bite.
MUSIC FADE
Felix: [00:04:00] So, are these art pieces kind of like pretentious looking?
Justine Paradis: [00:04:03] You know, I think that's in the eye of the beholder. Um, there's this tension in her work, and the magic really comes from the contrast between this impossibly chic setting and often a very humble ingredient.
MUSIC IN: Dognell, Blue Dot Sessions
Laila Gohar: even its appearance is humble. Like, it looks kind of dusty and not, like, much from the outside, but there's so much that can be done with it. You know, it can. It can crisp, it can whip, it can fry, it can bake, it can be turned into like, you know, mashed potatoes. I think there's just endless things that you can do with a potato.
So some of these endless things that Laila has done is she’s given potatoes tattoos. Red roses by the way look kinda great on a potato’s lumpy speckled skin.
Felix Poon: [00:05:12] I can see that.
Justine Paradis: She’s run an electrical current through raw potatoes as part of an installation. You know like that old middle school science experiment?
Nate Hegyi: [00:05:20] That's right. I forgot about that.
Felix Poon: [00:05:22] Has she, uh, tried to hook ‘em up to a microphone to see if they talk?
Justine Paradis: [00:05:27] What do – let the potato speak! And, very similarly to this Marie-Antoinette-era potato-PR guy, she once threw an entire potato party.
Nate: Mm!
Justine: Where she served a Spanish tortilla, which is an omelette made from eggs and potato, decorated with piped mashed potato icing. A table set with raw potatoes carved into candle holders. And for dessert, marzipan dusted with cocoa, to look like (what else)?
Nate: A potato.
Justine: A potato.
Felix Poon: [00:05:58] That's that's a lot of carbs. [00:06:00]
Laila Gohar: For me, the end result feels so, almost regal in a way.
You know, like we take it kind of for granted because it's like, oh, what is like a French fry? But a good French fry is so good,
Felix Poon: Yeah it is
you know, it's like crispy from the outside. It didn't absorb a lot of oil. The inside is like pillowy and fluffy, like, how can something be crispy and fluffy at the same time, you know?
Nate Hegyi: [00:06:10] Man, she, she's got it dialed in on the potato. She's thought a lot about it.
Justine Paradis: [00:06:14] What she’s done is taken this unphotogenic lump and she’s made it the centerpiece of her table. And I say we make it the centerpiece of THIS table –
Nate Hegyi: oooH!
Felix Poon: Of this episode! I have a potato story. Do you have a potato story, Nate?
Nate Hegyi: [00:06:46] I do have a potato story.
Justine Paradis: [00:06:47] Are we ready to reconsider the potato?
Felix Poon: [00:06:49] Hell yeah.
Nate Hegyi: Let's do it.
MUSIC: Everglow, Patrick Patrikios
Nate: This is Outside/In. I’m Nate Hegyi with Felix Poon and Justine Paradis. We have ventured out into the proverbial potato patch and dug up a couple stories that might make you rethink this humble vegetable… or is it a starch?
Friends, we give you: the potato show.
MUSIC FADE
Nate Hegyi: When I was growing up, I remember posters of the food pyramid everywhere in my school cafeteria.
Grain group, for energy! Fruits and veggies, for vitamins please! <<fade under>>
Eat the others, sparingly! Gimme gimmie gimme gimme 5 groups!
The food pyramid was an easy visual display of the federal government’s dietary guidelines. It made it seem so simple.
But biology doesn’t work that way.
MUX
We’ve all had arguments over tomatoes - it’s technically a fruit, because it has seeds, but you wouldn’t put it into a smoothie.
And grains have their own category on the food pyramid, but many of them are also technically fruits known as caryopsis.
And potatoes… well…
the potato has been a hot potato there, if you will, for many years.
Kristina Peterson is a reporter with the Wall Street Journal. She has devoted a lot of ink to a long-running spud spat. Whether potatoes should have a home in the veggie group.
No one really disputes that botanically speaking, the potato is a vegetable.
Vegetables are the roots, stems and leaves of a plant. And potatoes are tubers… which is a kind of modified stem.
But it’s also considered a starchy vegetable… meaning it has a lot of carbs in it.
And when make a plate of food, we often treat potatoes like we treat rice or pasta.
Kristina (02:25) And so periodically, // there are questions about whether it should really be kind of lumped in with other starchy foods.
That is the debate that’s happening now.
Every five years, the federal government reviews and revises its dietary guidelines.
For instance, we don’t have the food pyramid anymore. We have something called MyPlate now. And in 2025, the USDA is set to release its latest dietary recommendations.
This isn’t just advice on what to eat. These guidelines help dictate what can be served at school meals or what can be bought on federal child nutrition programs.
And as scientists were looking at people’s diets:
they raised the question which they were discussing about // potatoes should be considered interchangeable with grains.
And while potatoes are technically vegetables and do have nutrients like vitamin C and potassium…
11:39
the way that Americans consume a lot of the potatoes that we eat is through French fries. And so you are getting more fat along with that. And in addition, there are some nutrients in the potato peel, which is often removed when you're making French fries.
Because of this, other countries like The United Kingdom don’t count potatoes towards your daily serving of vegetables.
In fact, there was this big controversy that erupted across the pond recently.
I’m peppa pig!
If you have a kid… you definitely have heard of peppa pig. And in this episode, Peppa Pig had the gall to invite a Mr. Potato to talk about fruits and veggies.
Mr. Potato’s fruit and vegetable quiz! Fruits and vegetables keep us alive, always remember to eat your five!
KP: I spoke with multiple parents who felt misled by that because in the UK the potatoes don't count toward your five a day.
Here in the U.S., it’s very different. We count a lot of processed food as veggies. That can of V-8?
Veggie.
The tomato sauce on your pizza?
Veggie.
The french fries next to your hamburger?
Veggie.
Because potatoes – mashed, waffled, curlied, fried – they all count towards your daily vegetable servings according to the current U.S. dietary guidelines.
MUX POP
And D.C.’s powerful potato lobby wants to keep it that way.
We urge the committee to recognize that a potato is not a grain. Potatoes are the most widely produced vegetable in the United States.
That’s Kam Quarles… head of the National Potato Council testifying at a hearing last fall about the new guidelines.
Americans do not eat enough vegetables and potatoes are key to addressing this issue. Potatoes are versatile, affordable and nutrient dense choice where they serve as a springboard vegetable, introducing children to other kinds of less consumed vegetables…
Yeah, you did hear that right. Just like Ronald Reagan argued that marijuana is a gateway drug… the National Potato Council argues that potatoes are a gateway… veggie. Here’s Kristina Peterson again to explain.
That if you serve kids potatoes, like roasted potatoes with bell peppers, for example, they're more likely to eat all of their veggies than if, you know, you serve them salad and anyone who's a parent knows that kids and vegetables can be a challenge.
But Kristina says there’s an underlying financial worry that the National Potato Council has…
Does that affect their status for getting grants? USDA provides a lot of money through research grants and all sorts of things that are available to specialty crop producers and specialty crops actually refer to most like fruits and vegetables. So there were some kind of follow on implications of this.
Potatoes are big business in the United States. They are the most grown QUOTE UNQUOTE vegetable in the country. They bring in billions of dollars every year and support hundreds of thousands jobs. I mean, what other crop is enshrined on a license plate? Sure, Wisconsin has “America’s Diaryland.” But Idaho has “famous potatoes!”
These spud spats over whether a potato is considered a vegetable has been happening for years. And the potato lobby has gone to extreme lengths to make sure their point is heard… including.
an interesting subgroup of people who have gone on an all potato diet.
Yes!
And, um, one was with the Washington state potato industry. So he was protesting some proposed changes to the WIC program.
Back in 2010, the federal nutrition program for low-income women and children wouldn’t allow them to use vouchers to buy potatoes. And so this lobbyist ate nothing but potatoes for 60 days.
He says lost twenty pounds and inspired other people to try their own all-potato diets. one guy, up in Fairbanks, Alaska, even wrote a book about it called “The Potato Hack.”
Part of the goal for some people was to sort of reset your palate. And I talked to them about, you know, eating other foods after they've been eating only potatoes and apparently chocolate tastes amazing after you've only been eating potatoes. I mean, I think chocolate tastes amazing at all times. So, but.
Nate (21:41)
Yeah Yeah, exactly. I don't know if you need potatoes to tell you that chocolate's amazing didn't yeah, didn't he say like like if if you uh if you Are if you're if you still want to eat and the idea of eating one more potato Isn't appealing to you then you're full. You don't need to have any more food Yeah
Kristina (22:02)
Yeah, you're not really hungry. If you don't want another potato, you're not really hungry.
Potato diets aside, this tuber has some big allies on Capitol Hill, too. In March, a bipartisan group of FOURTEEN senators sent the USDA a letter urging it to keep classifying potatoes as a veggie.
Congress, particularly lawmakers from more potato -heavy producing states, often say, you know, don't touch my, don't touch our potatoes. And they generally win.
And it looks like they won again. The guidelines aren’t officially out yet… but Senator Susan Collins of Maine – which besides lobsters, produces a lot of potatoes – has told media outlets that the USDA has assured her taters will stay a veggie in next year’s dietary guidelines.
I think that the potato is a beloved food. And so I think that politicians who defend potatoes feel like they are on the winning side of an issue with voters.
But just because the government won’t budge on potatoes… doesn’t mean you don’t have to. Kristina has two kids of her own.
Nate: Where do you land? Potato as vegetable? Do you count it on the plate? Or as starch interchangeable with rice?
Kristina (18:34)
I will say my kids do love potatoes. I think it probably is not gonna directly lead to them eating Swiss chard, but I consider every new food that they eat to be a victory, so I'm happy with that.
mux
Nate Hegyi: That was Kristina Peterson… potato correspondent with the Wall Street Journal. We’ll be back with more spud stories, in just a minute.
Break
Justine Paradis: If an actor was to play the potato in a film… like there’s a Portlandia sketch, I don’t know if you’ve seen this, where they’re gathered around like Mad Men, around the table, and each person is representing a vegetable, like doing PR for a vegetable… Steve Buscemi is celery …..Who would be the potato?
Nate Hegyi: Paul Giamatti?
Justine Paradis: Why?
Nate Hegyi: I think that he has the um… I just think of the potato as a kind of grumpy vegetable, but that’s endearing, grump and endearing.
Justine Paradis: And universally loved.
Nate Hegyi: And universally loved, exactly.
[mux]
Nate Hegyi: Welcome back to Outside/in. That was Justine Paradis you were just hearing, and this is the Potato show - an entire podcast episode dedicated to reconsidering the humble spud… as something more.
Now, I thought I had heard all the basic ways to prepare and eat a potato. Fried, roasted, mashed, baked, twice-baked… But our final story comes from producer Felix Poon - and I’ve gotta say… I’d never heard of this one.
Here he is.
Felix Poon: There’s an appliance on my dad’s kitchen counter that looms large. You might not even know what it is just by looking at it. A maintenance worker asked him about it once.
Paul Poon: and I told him that, well, that's a juicer. And, he wondered why, uh. It's such a heavy machine for juicer
and then I told him it costs a lot of money. And and he was surprised. He was surprised.
Felix Poon: My dad’s juicer cost nearly three-thousand d ollars. And he got it for one reason, and one reason only. To make raw potato juice.
[MUX]
Felix Poon: My dad’s name is Paul. He’s 79. And he’s been juicing potatoes for over 15 years.
I tagged along with him to the grocery store so he could pick up the ingredients – carrots, Granny smith apples, and yellow or yukon gold potatoes.
Paul Poon: This potato may be just the last winter one. So it’s been stored for a long time.
[FADE UNDER]
My dad loooves to explain things. Sometimes on the phone with him, I could probably put the phone down, and pick it back up like, 10 minutes later, he’d still be explaining.
Felix Poon: So we’re looking at–
Paul Poon: For example, this one is better than this one.
Paul Poon: instead of peel the skin of the carrot, they say you need to keep the skin as well.
[brushing ASMR]
Felix Poon: My dad is meticulous about washing the vegetables. Everything about the potato juice feels like a ritual.
[chopping ambi]
Then…
[juicer on ambi]
Paul Poon: Turn on the cutter.
Felix Poon: So you’re pressing the ingredients down into the chute.
Paul Poon: Yeah.
Felix Poon: And then it gets cut up it goes in the bag.
Paul Poon: Now we gonna press through the pressing part to squeeze out the juice from the juice bag.
[pressing ambi]
Felix Poon: My dad says you should drink the juice, like, as soon as it’s pressed out of the bag, because you don’t want it to oxidize and lose its antioxidants.
Paul Poon: Yeah, you take that one.
[drinking sounds]
Felix Poon: It doesn’t actually taste that bad.
Felix Poon: I think it tastes like apple juice, but a little bit earthier apple juice.
Paul Poon: Right. At one time I did juice it and just try the potato alone. And it doesn’t taste good.
[MUX]
Felix Poon: My dad learned about potato juice back in 2008. He and my mom were in Hong Kong, and they were at this small gathering .
[00:54:56-00:55:05] Paul Poon: one person point to the bookshelf and say, hey, uh, there's a booklet
raw potato juice, uh, treatment
This “gathering” was a support group organized by the Hong Kong Cancer Society.
Paul Poon: So the booklet said it’s supposed to help. So she said okay sure, let’s try it.
Felix Poon: Doctors had found a tumor in my mom’s liver just a few months prior. I remember how scared she looked, sitting up on the exam table when the doctor delivered the news. I was 24, still young enough to be covered by her insurance. But suddenly I didn’t feel that young anymore.
[mux swell and fade]
Liver cancer caused by hepatitis B, is really prevalent in Asia. That’s why the doctors in Hong Kong have way more experience with it than they do here in the US. So my parents picked up and moved there temporarily – back to the city where they first met, when they were just teenagers in the 60s.
[00:15:11-00:15:17] Paul Poon: I invite her for a movie something like that to begin.
[00:16:57-00:17:50] Paul Poon: I think is, uh, My Fair Lady.
But she didn't know English, so. So for some reason she went with me. So that start, I think, the start of the relation.
Their marriage was typical for their generation – she cooked, and took care of us. She was fun and had a lot of friends. My dad, the engineer…he was outgoing too, but he was socially clumsy, and not the greatest listener. He irritated the heck out of my mom.
They- fought… all the time. That changed though, when she was diagnosed.
I get up early and make the juice because they get to drink with an empty stomach.
Felix Poon: So how come you made it, how come she didn’t make it?
Paul Poon: your mom's been cooking and taking care of me for a long time, so when she's falling sick, I want to, uh, do everything for her, so I. I did the juice.
Felix Poon: The potato juice wasn’t the only way my parents relationship was remade by cancer. But to me, it was a symbolic display of care. And technically, there was some theory behind it too. Potatoes are actually high in antioxidants.
The idea is to deliver a blast of them to your body.
There isn’t a ton of research on whether this works or not, it’s mostly Anecdotal success stories where nothing else worked until they tried juicing.
But cancer is scary, patients and their families, tend to throw everything and the kitchen sink at it.
[MUX]
Anyway, my mom got the tumor surgically removed, and the doctors said the prognosis was pretty good.
Paul Poon: her energy level, uh, returns, then she able to enjoy, uh, everyday life, uh, going out with friends, things like that. So, so the treatment in Hong Kong was very good for her.
She kept drinking the juice, just in case, to be sure the cancer wouldn’t come back.
And- my dad… kept making it for her.
I feel like juice was the one part of her cancer that he could actually control – the dosage, the frequency, the timing. He even pored over her blood test results and could recite her AST and ALT levels from memory, and then he’d tell you if he thought any changes had anything to do with the juice.
He believed in it.
[00:58:17-00:58:25] Paul Poon: Uh, the potato juice, uh, didn't stop the, the, the, the cancer from recurring.
[MUX]
Felix Poon: My mom got a scan about a year after her surgery.
[00:59:08-01:00:22] Paul Poon: even though the surgery removed the only, uh, tumor, they thought it's in there. But they had an MRI and found tumor on recurrence, it's already pretty big size, like two centimeter
Felix Poon: The doctors decided to operate again, and surgically removed the second tumor.
But the cancer came back a year after that, and this time, it spread outside her liver, to the rest of her body.
Her diagnostic was already stage four
[MUX SWELL]
She tried different experimental drugs, she tried chemo. All these treatments, they all came and went. But potato juice stuck as a daily ritual, for years. And she stayed healthy enough to go out to eat, meet up with friends.
Life was okay. Until it wasn’t anymore.
[01:11:31-01:11:35] Felix Poon: um, whose decision was it to stop juicing?
[01:11:35-01:11:46] Paul Poon: she she said she don't want to drink it anymore. Looks like it’s home hospice so you know where you’re heading anyway
[MUX SWELL AND OUT]
[01:25:15-01:25:20] Felix Poon: Did she think it worked, or did she think it was useless?
[01:25:20-01:27:55] Paul Poon: Kind of, uh, appreciate it, because she said that, uh, she got five years near normal, so, uh, it beat all the odds compared to other patients with liver cancer. So. And she can live
Uh, quite good, uh, life as a patient.
Felix Poon: In her last months, my mom spent a lot of time lying in bed and she watched a lot of cooking shows on TV.
I remember she always used to yell at cooking shows, like the way sports fans do when a player messes up.
I didn’t find this out til later, but apparently… my mom watched these cooking shows, and then turned to my dad, pointed at the TV, saying like, pay attention. That’s how you cook this, that’s how you cook that. Make sure you remember.
[Cooking show ambi swell and out]
Felix Poon: Meanwhile, my dad was feeding her, giving her pain meds, helping her go to the bathroom….
[01:23:58-01:24:04] Paul Poon: I took care of everything, uh, until her last moment, basically.
June 8th, 2013, was a Saturday. You could see the blue skies and white puffy clouds just outside her bedroom windows. Rays of sun shot through the gaps between the blinds.
[01:33:18-01:33:32] Paul Poon: So I remember the nurse visiting nurse said, uh, had she see everyone.
Felix Poon: Has she seen, everyone?
And I say yes.
And then, uh, the visiting nurse start the morphine.
[01:33:56-01:34:07] Paul Poon: it's comfortable because there are no pain. But on the other hand, uh, it's the last few hours when the morphine start.
[01:20:16-01:20:18] Paul Poon: so everybody was with her
[01:19:43-01:19:45] Paul Poon: your sister and brother
[01:20:19-01:20:28] Paul Poon: uh, including, uh, our niece, you know, Eileen, she came with she came with her family.
We’d all been taking turns being with her.
So, she’s not lonely.
Paul Poon: all the organs are shutting down. Including the breathing.
[MUX OUT]
uh, well, it, uh, she's gone, but, uh, she's with me, uh, always.
[01:41:10-01:41:16] Felix Poon: When was the first time you made juice again after that? Was was that was that weird?
[01:41:16-01:41:30] Paul Poon: Actually, when I my PSA went up again and my, the MRI said I got tumors in my prostate.
This is the reason why my dad is sold on potato juice. Because even though it didn’t save my mom, when he got tumors in his prostate, he drank potato juice, and then the tumors basically disappeared.
[01:42:26-01:42:31] Felix Poon: what was that like to use the, the the Norwalk juicer again for yourself? I mean.
[01:42:31-01:42:36] Paul Poon: But that's for myself only once a day, not twice a day.
[01:42:36-01:42:39] Felix Poon: But did it did it. Was it hard to do that?
Felix Poon: I’m trying really hard to get my dad to think deeper here.
[01:42:44-01:44:23] Paul Poon: It's not difficult because, uh, to be honest with you.
Do it for myself. I didn't clean the the ingredients as good as I used to be. So the time is, can cut in half. Just like any research type of project
[FADE UNDER AND OUT]
Felix Poon: Okay, he clearly doesn’t catch my drift.
For me though—I recently got my own juicer. And when I make potato juice with it, I can’t not be transported back to the final years of my mom’s life…
…the months I spent living with her in Hong Kong, where she showed me the bustling streets from her distant memories.
The walks we took amid the conifers, near our suburban American home, for the soothing smell of the pine needles.
And the recipes she tried passing on to me, like my favorite pickled plum spare ribs, and her signature turnip cakes.
Felix Poon: But there is one thing at least, you can say that my dad and I kind of agree on.
Paul Poon: well, that's a juicer. It's such a heavy machine for juicer, so.
Felix Poon: It is a heavy juicer. The heaviest juicer that I know.
[MUX]
For the credits:
Nate Hegyi: That’s it for our potato show. \This episode was produced by me, Nate Hegyi, Felix Poon, and Justine Paradis.
We would love if you could send us you own favorite potato recipes for us to try and share - baked, fried, roasted, juiced - what’s your favorite way to do potatoes? Shoot us an email at outside in at nhpr dot org or find us on Instagram at Outsideinradio.
Justine Paradis: Nate! One more thing!
Nate Hegyi: Yes Justine?
Justine Paradis: Hey! So as I was wrapping up my conversation with Laila Gohar, the artist who threw the potato party – I asked her, as I always do at the end of an interview – if there’s anything she wanted to mention, or wished I’d asked. And before I was even done with the question, she said –
Laila Gohar: [00:11:56] you should do a bean show.
Justine Paradis: [00:11:57] A bean show, why?
Laila Gohar: [00:11:58] Beans have the same appeal, in my opinion. [00:12:00]
Justine Paradis: [00:12:00] How so?
Laila Gohar: [00:12:01] It's similar, you know, and that it's humble, it's accessible, but it feels so, like, luxurious in a way. You know, perfectly cooked beans are so creamy, and it's, it's there's something about them that to me feel almost regal.
Justine Paradis: [00:12:14] I like it. I'll put that suggestion forward. Maybe we'll do a series.
Laila Gohar: [00:12:18] Pitch it. Yeah, I think it's a great idea.
[mux]
Nate Hegyi: This episode was edited by our Executive Potato, Taylor Quimby.
Rebecca Lavoie is NHPR’s Director of On-Demand Starch.
Music by Blue Dot Sessions and Patrick Patrikios.
Outside/In is a production of New Hampshire Public Radio.