Very, Very Normal Potatoes

Why are potatoes expensive in my market?  They come three bald potatoes in a black plastic tray, sealed in saran wrap.  They have been cleaned and they look reasonably appetizing.  The price on the top suggest they are ten-kuai or about $1.80 for three potatoes. I'm not a bargain hunter and I haven’t bought potatoes back home for a long time but even a dummy like me knows that I could likely buy a sack of thirty potatoes back home for $4.00.  And I could probably do it here in Beijing, as well. 

Ahh, Jenny’s.  Our local market.  Location is everything, always. They have the location within the compound, they have fresh goods, and things that you need.  A wet-market where you cold go and buy such things cheaply is a significant schlepp and so, with the Chinese dish disanxian in mind a buy two green bell-peppers.  The cost?  Ten-kuai, and two red-onions as well. The cost?  Ten-kuai, and my potatoes.  Ten-kaui must be what they think they can get away with for individually wrapped pairings of vegetables.  Nothing is distinguished as pricey or top-shelf, because everything is.  These are very, very normal, potatoes.

When I get home, I take the food out of two plastic bags.  I should have brought cloth bags.  I lay out the expensive, normal potatoes, the expensive, every-day bell peppers, the ever-so-normal top-shelf onions and begin to liberate them from their plastic encasement.  All this plastic goes into a plastic garbage bag.  It’s a deadening, industrial means by which to start preparing dinner. 

The “three from underneath” dish is OK.  The potatoes are soft and have absorbed the soy sauce.  They taste good.  They'd better.  The onions are still crisp.  They went in last.  The peppers didn’t hold up so well.  They’re wonky.  It’s a dish that takes some iteration to get right and I’m still mid-gestation.   Rather than considering the quaint, old fashioned way I used to buy produce in China twenty years ago, “I’m considering the quaint, old fashioned way I used to buy produce in the U.S. last summer.

Tuesday, 6/18/19