The not-so-magic powder

I can probably admit to this now but a few years ago myself and a highly respected NVS member who shall remain nameless, were convinced that a certain spud specialist must have been treating his/her show potatoes with some product that made his/her spuds shine out on the show bench. This was because at the end of a three day show his/her spuds looked as bad as, if not worse than everyone else's exhibits. In our infinite wisdom we decided that the product being employed was something called 'Dry White' which is used in fish and chip shops to keep the buckets of chopped up chips nice and white before they're fried. As my boss also owns a chip shop I duly purloined some of said substance and underwent a series of not very scientific tests to see if they made any difference on my own spuds.




I washed and prepped some Winston and Kestrel spuds, doing one of each in the normal way with no treatment (on the right), and one of each was dipped in the Dry White solution overnight (on the left). The spuds in the background were a plate of Kestrel I'd got best in show with the previous weekend. There was no discernible difference as far as I could tell after a day or two, but after three days the Kestrel that had been dipped in the 'magic mix' looked absolutely horrendous, and actually the photo doesn't do justice to just how manky it looked. In fact, coloured spuds in general reacted very badly and some Maxine that I had used in one of my first trugs at Malvern reacted really badly and displayed all manner of strange callouses after a couple of days in the marquee. They were probably burn marks and I was quite glad to get the trug away at the end of the Sunday afternoon as I was quite embarrassed about them.



What this illustrates is that we all seek to find that elusive secret or substance that we are convinced our competitors must know and we don't, when in fact their success is probably just down to hard work, dedication and a bit of extra know-how. I've asked various people about this exhibitor's spuds and at the end of the day I think they just wash the skins to within an inch of their lives at the last possible minute so that when benched they generally look the best. However, that much 'polishing' has to come at a price, and this can show up as a truly shocking skin finish by the end of the second day. If it's a three day show the visiting public will be scratching their heads wondering why there's a red card against a set of green spuds with purple bruising that are barely fit to grace the rubbish bin.

I'm reminded of this because at the weekend I found a jamjar of powder and couldn't remember what it was (always label things!!!) so I popped the lid off and had a sniff to see if I could recognise it. I cannot begin to describe the searing pain that assaulted my nostrils at that moment in time, pain that when straight to the back of my eyelids and then down to my throat so violently it felt like my head was being chopped up with scissors from the inside. It was the Dry White powder of course but something had happened to it in the two years it had been in storage in my garage to make it so unpleasant. Just remember, every time you buy a bag of chips you're eating some of that bloody stuff. And be very careful what you sniff!


Anyway....to cut a long story short, Sherie Plumb is NOT using Dry White or any other foreign substance. And my eyeballs are still f*cking hurting!