It is easy to think of potatoes, and fortunately for men who have not much money it is easy to think of them with a certain safety. Potatoes are one of the last things to disappear, in times of war, which is probably why they should not be forgotten in times of peace.
Interpretation
The quote emphasizes the importance of appreciating simple, reliable resources, like potatoes, which remain valuable in both good and bad times.
M. F. K. Fisher's quote reflects on the significance of basic sustenance like potatoes, suggesting that they symbolize security and reliability. In times of conflict, such staples become crucial, reminding us to value and not overlook these essentials during peaceful periods. The underlying message encourages a mindful appreciation of simplicity and sustenance, promoting the idea that in both prosperity and adversity, certain things should remain cherished.
In practice
In a discussion about food security during a community meeting.
I sat in the gradually chilling room, thinking of my whole past the way a drowning man is supposed to, and it seemed part of the present, part of the gray cold and the beggar woman without a face and the moulting birds frozen to their own filth in the Orangerie. I know now I was in the throes of some small glandular crisis, a sublimated bilious attack, a flick from the whip of melancholia, but then it was terrifying...nameless...
It seems to me that our three basic needs, for food and security and love, are so mixed and mingled and entwined that we cannot straightly think of one without the others. So it happens that when I write of hunger, I am really writing about love and the hunger for it, and warmth and the love of it and the hunger for it… and then the warmth and richness and fine reality of hunger satisfied… and it is all one.
In spite of all the talk and study about our next years, all the silent ponderings about what lies within them...it seems plain to us that many things are wrong in the present ones that can be, must be, changed. Our texture of belief has great holes in it. Our pattern lacks pieces.
Dining partners, regardless of gender, social standing, or the years they've lived, should be chosen for their ability to eat - and drink! - with the right mixture of abandon and restraint. They should enjoy food, and look upon its preparation and its degustation as one of the human arts.
There's a communion of more than our bodies when bread is broken and wine drunk.
...for me there is too little of life to spend most of it forcing myself into detachment from it.
As breath stills our mind, our energies are free to unhook from the senses and bend inward.
In the magical universe there are no coincidences and there are no accidents. Nothing happens unless someone wills it to happen. The dogma of science is that the will cannot possibly affect external forces, and I think that’s just ridiculous. It’s as bad as the church. My viewpoint is the exact contrary of the scientific viewpoint. I believe that if you run into somebody in the street it’s for a reason.
Civilisation is partly about restraining the male of the species from engaging in the violence of the hunter-gatherer period. But it doesn't take an awful lot to unleash it.
My days – the blossom of my youth and the flower of my manhood – have been darkened by the dreariness of servitude. In this my native land – in the land of my sires – I am degraded without fault as an alien and an outcast.
Man is obviously made for thinking. Therein lies all his dignity and his merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought.
A good traveller is one who does not know where he is going to, and a perfect traveller does not know where he came from.
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