Macbeth Potatoes

My friend Jane told me once that I must buy organic potatoes - all other were unsafe. I followed her advice, which really meant that I quit buying potatoes altogether. I felt like I couldn't afford organic potatoes. Well, my friends, those days are over. Aldi now has 99¢ organic potatoes!

Jeffrey Moyer, chair of the National Organic Standards Board, has this to say about potatoes:

Root vegetables absorb herbicides, pesticides, and fungicides that wind up in soil. In the case of potatoes-the nation's most popular vegetable-they're treated with fungicides during the growing season, then sprayed with herbicides to kill off the fibrous vines before harvesting. After they're dug up, the potatoes are treated yet again to prevent them from sprouting. "Try this experiment: Buy a conventional potato in a store, and try to get it to sprout. It won't," says Moyer, "I've talked with potato growers who say point-blank they would never eat the potatoes they sell. They have separate plots where they grow potatoes for themselves without all the chemicals." (PREVENTION Magazine)

Chemicals are so absorbed into the very being of non-organic potatoes that even obsessive Macbeth-ish washing is not going to make one bit of difference. 

No recipe today, who needs one? A baked potato is pure perfection.