PEAS AND POTATOES

Peas are one of the colourful vegetables featured at dinner this week here at Carrington Retirement Home that is tasty and a delight to the eye as well. They are gliding around a serving of the potato that sits silently nearby. Unless their brown coats remain when baked, the potato is denuded of its most valuable asset and is to the compost. According to Mary Ellen Camire, PhD, professor in the department of food science and human nutrition at the University of Maine, her advice is, “To take advantage of the potato’s cancer fighting abilities, you really have to eat the peel. A potato’s healing ability contains an anti-carcinogenic compound called chlorogenic acid.”

When hosting a Thanksgiving dinner, my son noticed that I was sliding the skins from the kettle of boiled potatoes. “Don’t discard them and I will eat them with leftovers tomorrow,” he requested. Sometimes children can be wiser than a parent who may care more about what others think when there is a possible higher wisdom to consider. My son later received the gold medal as top student with honours when he graduated from the University of Victoria. From my son’s advice, I have always remembered to use the complete potato with its fashionable brown coat along with the rest of the potato. When I notice its brown coat still remains on the white plates as our pleasant servers carry away the most valuable asset from our table to join scraps, there comes a feeling of heart regret and a wish that other children will offer his advice to parents and help those who may be silently developing cancer cells.