I Think I’ll Do the Mashed Potatoes (Does This Make Me a Pervert?)

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Personally, I think it is perverse that so many diners in restaurants are now “doing” their food. This phraseology may not bother you in the least. Actually, I’m fairly sure you don’t give it a second thought. I, on the other hand, am driven around the bend whenever I hear someone say to a server “I think I’ll do the (fill in any dish you care to).” It chafes my brain. It sets off in my skull one of those Doppler Effect police sirens you hear in every French noir gangster film. I do not like it, I do not approve of it, and I do take umbrage. Also, I think it is a fine how do you do. Call me a prude; I will not do my food. (Is this a t-shirt?) The image conjured up in my admittedly elevated imagination by the phrase “I’ll do the mashed potatoes”, unless one is stepping out onto a dance floor, is not, in my head anyway, a pretty one. I admit it, and I’m sorry. But I can’t help it.

Does this make me a pervert? Am I out of line here? I don’t know – one does repair work on a car. One does one’s nails. One may do a crossword puzzle. We all do the dishes. None of these activities that we do of a normal day creates the same kind of ghastly images in my mind as the aforementioned doing “the mashed potatoes” because unlike doing any kind of potatoes, be they, boiled, baked, French fried, scalloped, or mashed, these other things are things that we all routinely do. But, as any child of the sixties knows, or any child of any of the subsequent decades, one does not do food. No! One can however, if one gets lucky, do some body. Or, if one gets very lucky and is very adventurous, and the party is really as they say, mad good – one can do, or get done, by two or three bodies. I am almost certain that the great swordsman Giacomo Girolamo Casanova himself, even in his randiest state, could not bring himself to do the mashed potatoes, even if what was set before him was the most voluptuous plate of velvety, creamy, hot, mashed potatoes ever to appear before his jaded eyes. Even if he were crazy drunk out of his– well, I’m not going to go that far…you just never can tell with a fellow like Casanova. I myself, no Casanova by any stretch, but in my time no slouch in affaires d’amour either, could never bring myself to deflower a cantaloupe, much less entertain the idea of running my junk through a dish of hot mashed potatoes. Non, mes amis…jamais. Ixnay, evernay. Forgive me Mississippi and Alabama et al., but it just seems so…backwoods-ish.

So – okay, but what ever happened to “I’ll have the mashed potatoes” anyway? And when did it happen? I can understand when a cook in the kitchen says I’ll do the mashed potatoes, the word “do” being used as an active verb, in this instance the act of actually standing over the stove, potato masher in hand, and making the mashed potatoes. And where was I when people ordering in restaurants, or shopping at the meat counter in the market, started to do their food? i.e.; “I’ll do a pound of the liver”. Have I missed some sort of new movement here? Is this because of the fear of STD’s? Is it because it’s just a whole lot more safe to do it with a pumpkin squash – and maybe even less messy in the long run? Or are people just a whole lot more adventurous than I, even in my wildest moments, ever was? Every time I hear someone say something to the effect of, “let’s see…I’ll do the avocado, then I’ll do a cup of the chicken soup, and for the main…hmm…I think I’ll do the meat loaf,” Really? That’s an awful lot of doing guy. You could get a hernia from all that doing. And, I can’t help but wonder how hot that soup could be anyway… and – a cup? Uh…I don’t know.

I am here to tell you that no attributes my server can breathlessly ascribe to the poached wild Wahoo I’m considering ordering –  not “fresh”, not “beautiful”, not “sumptuous”, not even “a seductively delicious game fish, boat dressed, and slowly poached in a glorious mélange of mirepoix, leeks, and parsley, with just a soupcon of fennel, slowly sweated in butter flown in this morning from Bordier’s La Maison du Beurre in St. Malo on the Brittany coast, and then gently enveloped in a barely shimmering court bouillon made with a 2007 Joseph Phelps Sauvignon Blanc, which by the way has gorgeous legs, all ultimately brought to a perfect climax in a slowly building symphonic crescendo by chef ” – not even all that could make me want to do this fish, thank you. I don’t care how “game” it may be, or how “wild”, or if it actually yells “wahoo!” in the throes, or if you “dressed” it in a garter-belt –as our friends the Brits say, it’s just not on.

In the online free dictionary the word “do” as in “let’s do lunch” is the eightieth (!) listed usage of “do”. I’d like to know how, in the name of Ralph Kramden’s Chef-O’-Da-Future, did it move up to a position of such common usage? Did it arise out of the vernacular of “do coke?” Do business? Do the monkey time in your prime? Be warned; whatever answer you may provide to this question will not ameliorate the feeling that arises in me upon hearing someone talking about doing some item of food. In my mind I get a mental picture that is, to me anyway, very funny, and several steps below bestiality. Also, I can’t help but associate the aforementioned phrase “let’s do lunch” with some glib, slick talking, polka-dot suspenders-wearing big time hedge fund manager on Wall Street, wearing a fifteen thousand dollar Bijan suit, diamond Cartier cufflinks, and alligator shoes, whispering obscene dollar amounts into his/her cell phone, feet in said alligator shoes up on his/her huge desk, and/or his/her con artist counterpart in Hollywood  – either of which automatically engenders in me great churning waves of nausea.

So you intrepid folks out there who like to live on the edge can, and by all means certainly should, continue to do all the hanger steaks, cheeseburgers, and bagels, lox, and cream cheese you like. Or, since you are doing all your food, may we consider it juuuuust a little more than like? Perhaps some new kind of man boiled potato love? And of course, you can always do a nice plain organic non-fat yogurt – if you’re mindful of the need for safe sex – although a lot of them are Greek-style. Me? I’ll just go on my merry way far behind the times merely having my ordinary, unexciting but tasty, mashed potatoes. But that’s just me.

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