With eggs so expensive, should we be painting potatoes at Easter? There's only one way to find out...
Would you paint a potato? Don't worry, this isn't some crazy Dadaist take on those old "You wouldn't download a car" commercials. America, apparently, has been gripped by potato decorating fever, sparked first by memes about the price of eggs in the run-up to Easter, then by a concerted effort by Potatoes USA to make the Everyone's favorite root vegetable is briefly trending. It didn't hurt that US egg prices were up 55% in one year, while potatoes were up only 14%. I was forced to reduce my own Gaston-type drinking levels to just two or three a day. And so, with my five-year-old expressing serious doubts and absolutely no idea what kind of paint works on vegetables, I went to the stores to pick up a bag of Co-op's third-best.
< p class="dcr-8zipgp">First of all, let's admit that this is all obviously ridiculous. I'm no Martin Lewis - or Heston Blumenthal - but even I know you can still enjoy all the benefits of eating an egg and still painting it by drilling a hole in each end and blowing the pieces that leak out. It's really simple enough for a real kid to make, and then you have a delicious omelet.A potato, though? Look, I'm sure it's possible to take your artistic efforts off before you smash them, or even invest in some edible paint, but those two things defeat the purpose of the exercise - you can't don't keep your ovoid art object, and you don't really save any money. Winner: the egg.
But what about the painting itself? Well, after some coaxing from the boy - "The Easter bunny doesn't like potatoes" - it all turned out pretty well. Granted, a potato provides a less uniform paint surface than an egg, but for the dedicated decorator, this can actually work in their favor. Rather than having each subject conform to a flattened spheroid, you can start your potato-painting journey by choosing a potato that mimics the look you're going for: pear-shaped for Winnie-the-Pooh, cutting edge for Daniel Craig.
And the fun doesn't stop when you've selected your starchy canvas: if you're creative, every whorl and divot represents an opportunity, rather than a challenge. It turns out that painting a potato has more in common with the art of the abstract expressionists than the precision an egg demands - it's neither better nor worse, but rewards a different temperament.
That's what my five year old son said, anyway. Full disclosure, he's a veteran, coming to this project hot off the heels of winning his school's Easter diorama contest with no more than a perfectly acceptable amount of parental help from me The subject was Mario from Super Mario Bros - he very wisely decided to make a piranha. ..
Would you paint a potato? Don't worry, this isn't some crazy Dadaist take on those old "You wouldn't download a car" commercials. America, apparently, has been gripped by potato decorating fever, sparked first by memes about the price of eggs in the run-up to Easter, then by a concerted effort by Potatoes USA to make the Everyone's favorite root vegetable is briefly trending. It didn't hurt that US egg prices were up 55% in one year, while potatoes were up only 14%. I was forced to reduce my own Gaston-type drinking levels to just two or three a day. And so, with my five-year-old expressing serious doubts and absolutely no idea what kind of paint works on vegetables, I went to the stores to pick up a bag of Co-op's third-best.
< p class="dcr-8zipgp">First of all, let's admit that this is all obviously ridiculous. I'm no Martin Lewis - or Heston Blumenthal - but even I know you can still enjoy all the benefits of eating an egg and still painting it by drilling a hole in each end and blowing the pieces that leak out. It's really simple enough for a real kid to make, and then you have a delicious omelet.A potato, though? Look, I'm sure it's possible to take your artistic efforts off before you smash them, or even invest in some edible paint, but those two things defeat the purpose of the exercise - you can't don't keep your ovoid art object, and you don't really save any money. Winner: the egg.
But what about the painting itself? Well, after some coaxing from the boy - "The Easter bunny doesn't like potatoes" - it all turned out pretty well. Granted, a potato provides a less uniform paint surface than an egg, but for the dedicated decorator, this can actually work in their favor. Rather than having each subject conform to a flattened spheroid, you can start your potato-painting journey by choosing a potato that mimics the look you're going for: pear-shaped for Winnie-the-Pooh, cutting edge for Daniel Craig.
And the fun doesn't stop when you've selected your starchy canvas: if you're creative, every whorl and divot represents an opportunity, rather than a challenge. It turns out that painting a potato has more in common with the art of the abstract expressionists than the precision an egg demands - it's neither better nor worse, but rewards a different temperament.
That's what my five year old son said, anyway. Full disclosure, he's a veteran, coming to this project hot off the heels of winning his school's Easter diorama contest with no more than a perfectly acceptable amount of parental help from me The subject was Mario from Super Mario Bros - he very wisely decided to make a piranha. ..
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