Here I am standing at the kitchen sink beginning preparations for the family dinner. The queues at the shop and heavy traffic on the return journey have delayed me a little but, never mind, I still have time to get the dinner together at this stage

Peeling starts and as with too many meals these days the scenario is much the same. Peel one, skip one, hack one, good one, holes, half potato, quarter potato, skip one again. Before you know it you have lost more potato than you have retained! The sink is now full of black eyes, rotten centres and large chunks of unusable potato, you may just be lucky enough to scratch enough potato together to go around.

Looking into the sink annoyance besets me. Why is it so hard to buy a bag of decent potatoes these days in Ireland? I have heard of The Great Potato Blight but this is ridiculous. It isn’t like you can scoop the whole lot up, place it in the bag and march back to the shop to complain– land the bag on the counter with your complaint and you will look half-mad. Arrive to complain without the evidence and they just might not believe you. It is a difficult one for the cook to deal with on a regular basis.

How much money are we throwing into our bins? I have often resorted to the special, silver foil brand (extra price) to ensure top quality in my spuds, only to be let down again! I must admit to resorting to both avenues of complaint outlined above– I found the accompanied version worked better!

Bad potatoes are one of the many things about which we are reluctant to complain, yet it costs us a lot of money on a monthly basis. Who do we blame– farmers, buyers of produce in supermarkets. It seems we just have to accept that if we buy a bag of spuds and half of them are rotten then we throw them out and go buy more the next day! Don’t throw your money in the bin please– speak up!