EGGS AND POTATOES

“Remember,” says the old Russian Proverb, “The same water that hardens the egg, also softens the potatoes.”

What does that mean, do you reckon? That it’s okay if we react differently to the same thing happening to us? We’re not supposed to expect to be eggs if we’re actually potatoes? Don’t compare yourself to how other people react?

Or just, Russian potatoes taste a bit eggy because they always cook ‘em in the same pan?

Eggs and potatoes; weird thing to cook together. If you were keeping warm in the long Siberian winter, sure, you probably would boil up some spuds and slip a couple of hard-boiled eggies into your slippers for warmth I guess. I doubt I’d eat all that stodge though.

Also, eggs have an inedible shell, and potatoes have a thin but edible skin. What’s more (and you might be different) we always peel our potatoes before boiling them, meaning that at the boiling stage, the potato has been deprived of its natural protection.

Finally, eggs start off soft - liquid soft in fact, whereas potatoes grow firm in the dark  winter soil. Before they’ve hit the water, the egg and the potato were fundamentally different, down to the molecule. I’m starting to think this proverb isn’t about the water at all.

Keep the skin on the potato, bake it in the oven and weirdly, the skin goes hard while the inside goes soft! Now that’s some engineering. I’ve no idea what happens to an uncracked egg if you bake it at 120 degrees. Presumably it blows up like a little pressure bomb; that’s an experiment I’m not willing to try.

So you could say that the same oven that bakes the potato also explodes the egg and has you picking shell out of the element.

Or you could say the same air that dries the paint also tickles the caterpillar. Or the same snow that excites a toddler annoys a chartered accountant. Or the same kind of apple that Eve munched on, also bopped Isaac Newton on the noggin.

I guess the point is about resilience. I don’t have to have everything sorted out if I’m in hot water, and I don’t have to be commando-tough to survive a little testing time. The egg is designed to harden; the potato is hardwired to soften. The caterpillar giggles and the thixotropic paint crystallises in the sunshine; the chartered account works from home and, if able to, remembers what it’s like to be a toddler on a tea tray.

I don’t know what Newton was playing at.

Everyone’s different.