Can You Eat Just Potatoes?

I love potatoes. I love potato chips, I love potatoes - mashed, baked, fried, even nuked – and I loooove French fries. But could I only eat potatoes? I might be happy for a bit, but even I'm not sure if I could eat just potatoes. I mean what about burgers and chocolate, right? You gotta have a balanced diet.

In all seriousness though, the website Digg, with their semi-regular feature What Would Happen If, asks the magical question - What Would Happen If You Ate Nothing But Potatoes?

Inspired by the astronaut character in The Martian who did in fact survive on just potatoes, the Digg team took a good scientific look at the prospect. Here were their results, right here.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #232

Here's another in our series of fictional fast food places we wish were real. From the Quentin Tarantino universe of film continuity, this is Big Kahuna Burger, most notably from Pulp Fiction and From Dusk till Dawn. Wow, I just love those golden fries...

French Fry Diary 689: Famous Nathan

I like documentaries, so there's that, but folks that know me know the real reason I watched Famous Nathan, the bio-doc about Nathan Handwerker and his restaurant empire Nathan's Famous. Yeah, for the fries.

Regular readers know that I count Nathan's Famous Jumbo Crinkle Cut French Fries among the best fast food franchise fries, so of course I'd like some possible background on them. While Famous Nathan is a doc on Nathan Handwerker, you never know, there might be some insight on the fries.

The first thing on that front that caught my attention were the old pictures of the original Nathan's at Coney Island. The price I saw for fries (although the potato chips were more prevalent, at least in the old days) was five cents, which is cool, but I also noticed something else.

Nathan's had a lot of stuff for sale like malteds, different flavored sodas, hamburgers, potato chips, and roast beef. Look close, you'll even see fried sea food, barbeque, and chow mein. Clam chowder, frog's legs, shrimp - what couldn't you get at Nathan's?

The bio-doc goes on to reconstruct Nathan's journey to America, his rise in his chosen field, include interviews with family and friends, as well as feuds. Everyone in the doc is a larger than life character who plays a part in the world of famous Nathan and his empire on that corner in Coney Island. This is a delicious treat full of wonderful stories.

Fries aside, Famous Nathan, while failing in the best way as a biography because Nathan Handwerker was a hard man to get a handle on, the film is an amazing look at the American Jewish experience in the 20th century. The home movies may be of a specific famous family, but the tales are that of every family. This is America. Highly recommended.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #205

If you've seen the new Disney/Pixar release Inside Out, you know what lurks just inside the gates of Imagination Land… a forest of French fries!

For more of my thoughts on Inside Out, my review is here at my pop culture blog Welcome to Hell, and The Bride and I discuss the film in depth on the latest episode of The Make Mine Magic Podcast. Check it out.

French Fry Diary 629: Carioca's - TCM Cruise Day Two

Another of the renovations of the 're-imagined' Disney Magic is the replacement of Parrot Cay, always one of my favorite restaurants on board with Carioca's. It has roughly the same flavor, only now with an animated mascot. 

By name, Jose Carioca was one of the original Three Caballeros, with Donald Duck and Panchito, from the film of the same name, Saludos Amigos, and other features and shorts. Jose is unfortunately one of those characters forgotten to the mists of time, but thankfully, and hopefully on his way to a comeback. I'll miss Parrot Cay, but still this isn't bad.

There has been really only slight remodeling and repainting. They have added lots of Chinese lanterns a la Tangled hanging from the ceiling, but really not much else. The restaurant still a tropical flavor, all it's really had is a name change,

some new lighting, and a brisk rebranding.

On the surface however, one thing that hasn't changed much is the menu. This may as well have been Parrot Cay. I got the Roasted Honey BBQ Chicken Breast, and it was very good, and the sauce was also very good. If there was any crushed sweet potato, as advertized, on the plate, I couldn't find it, or rather, taste it. I probably should have gotten a side order of fries like I did the previous night if I wanted to appease my tater jones.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #154

It's not easy being an X-Man...

P.S. If you're interested in my non-potato-related opinions of the new X-Men: Days of Future Past movie, you can check out my written review here, and listen to The Bride and I talk about it on The Make Mine Magic Podcast here.

And while I'm shamelessly plugging away, you do know you can find French Fry Diary at Facebook and Pinterest too, right?

Random Tater Pic of the Day #56

Mr. Potato Head as Batman, the Dark Knight. Photo taken at All Things Fun!, South Jersey's premiere comics, gaming and toy store, located in West Berlin, New Jersey.

Random Tater Pic of the Day #38

More from The Bride's work conference in Los Angeles... another catered business lunch in the Ghostbusters hotel, and another serving of potatoes. In the serving tray this time are Roasted Yukon Gold Potatoes. Mmmm...

Random Tater Pic of the Day #37

These were called Roasted Marble Colored Potatoes. They were served to The Bride at a catered business lunch in Los Angeles, at the Biltmore Millennium Hotel.

For film trivia fans out there, it's notable that that this hotel's ballroom was notably destroyed by Slimer and the Ghostbusters in the 1984 movie.

"We came, we saw, we ate some spuds."

French Fry Diary 289: Lamb Fries

I was watching "Chopped" on the Food Network recently and one of the mystery ingredients was 'lamb fries.' Immediately my eyes and ears perked up. They were going to do fries on "Chopped." And then I was shocked to find out that lamb fries have nothing remotely to do with fries. They're more like the quizzically named 'sweet breads,' in other words, they're lamb testicles. Yep, serious serious ick.

This video clip from 1988's Funny Farm sheds a bit more light on the subject:



Remember, folks, lamb fries are NOT fries. This has been a public service announcement from French Fry Diary.

French Fry Diary 246: French Fries and Curry

As seems to be the rule with movies with the word 'fries' in the title (see Freedom Fries and Home Fries) this film has very little to do with the favorite fried food.

While it's not really a Bollywood film, I really wish French Fries and Curry did follow the formula, I mean, the DVD even comes with a Bollywood style music video as a special feature. The movie, the first (and I hope the last) feature from English filmmaker Sarmishtha Parida, follows three women as they look for their Mr. Rights. Oddly writer/director Parida chose to film it on videotape, which at first seems cheap, and a bit disorienting, but you get used to it - except for all the freeze frames.

The title comes from the fact that one of the girls likes Indian food, and one of the others has a French fry addiction. We never learn what the other woman likes to eat. There are many restaurant and eating scenes but no fries. Talk about false advertising...

French Fries and Curry is ponderously written, filmed and acted, not to mention having values that are scarily prehistoric for being made in 2004. Even the voiceovers exhibit bad acting. This is bad, even worse than the worst student film you've seen, sooo slow and sometimes painful to watch.

This is a truly terrible, terrible, movie, probably one of the worst I've ever seen - and that's saying a lot. And to top it off, no fries. Boooo...

French Fry Diary 241: Freedom Fries

Here's the gist. America went to war in Iraq, and it was a very unpopular war. Among the many countries that opposed this, one of the most vocal was France. In response, many American citizens started calling French fries by a new name - "Freedom fries." That's all there is to it. President Bush did not mandate this, none of the major fast food companies did this, and let's face it, this was not the first time France had behaved arrogantly and we made fun of them for it.

And bottom line, no matter how much they whine about it, the French didn't create the French fry, the Belgians did. It's just a name, and it doesn't matter. Come on, there's no dog in a hot dog and nobody has a problem with that, right?

Why am I irritated by this all of a sudden? I just saw a movie called Freedom Fries: And Other Stupidity We'll Have to Explain to Our Grandchildren. I say movie, because even though it tries very hard to look like a documentary, but it's basically an opinion piece by writer/director/producer Carl Christman. It's not about French fries, despite the title. Christman has a problem with President Bush, and made a movie to express his opinion - which is wonderful, because I am all for expressing your opinion, but for some reason he felt the need to sully the name of the favorite fried food to do it.

He's not as bad as Michael Moore or Morgan Spurlock, but he does only want to present his opinion, and everyone else's is stupid. Carl Christman seems to be as anti-French fries as much as he is against Bush, the war, the government, God, bumper stickers, Disney World, protest (unless he agrees with the cause), money, buying American, buying anything for that matter, etc. - it goes on and on. Just about the only thing he's not against is bitching - cuz he does a lot of that. Oh yeah, and France. He seems to like France a lot.

The other thing that bugs me about this movie (more than it not really being about French fries) is that when he does show fries, they are from McDonald's (and I'm willing to bet he's anti-Mickey D's too), but McDonald's never changed the name of their product to "Freedom Fries," so why imply that they did? Shame, shame, more research and more fries I think are in order for Mr. Christman.

French Fry Diary 115: Home Fries, The Movie

Home Fries ~ Nope, not what the title implies at all. Despite what might have been hoped for, this flick has little to do with the favorite fried food.

This quirky dark comedy has all the writing and the intentions of a Coen brothers film yet none of the performances. The eclectic cast, headlined by Drew Barrymore and Luke Wilson, and filled out by Catherine O’Hara, Jake Busey and Shelley Duvall, among others, is adequate but little else.

Dysfunctional family plus infidelity plus pregnancy equals attempted hilarity, it seems. Add in some high tech helicopters, some rednecks, cheap headsets and a burger joint, and you have Home Fries.

These are actually one or two shots of home fries, so it wasn’t quite false advertising, I guess. And I wonder what kind of fries the fictional Burger-Matic actually has... we never see them...

More conventional movie reviews can be found over at my pop culture blog, Welcome to Hell, feel free to check it out.

Iron Man 2... Sort Of...

I took this picture last Saturday, Free Comic Book Day, at my favorite comics shop, All Things Fun!. I figured it would be apropros for today, the American release of Iron Man 2.

That's right, it's an Iron Man 2 Mr. Potato Head. And I love the name - Tony Starch. Perfect. Although I have to wonder if the folks at Hasbro thought of maybe different armors as well as different faces, etc. That would be even more perfect, if such a thing was grammatically possible.

That's French Fry Diary for today. I'm off to see Iron Man 2, because if there's one thing I'm geekier about than French fries, it's comics!