Celebrating Our One Year Potato-A-Versary By Eating Plain Potatoes Again

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MEET THE KROCKS: We are a married couple who started on a life-changing whole food, plant-based weight loss journey in June 2018. To date, we have lost over 270 pounds combined and we aren’t done yet! Read Our Story

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We began this journey back in June 2018. As we approached the one year anniversary of our two weeks of potatoes, we started thinking of ideas to celebrate. When Brian came home and said “I’ve got it! Let’s eat plain potatoes again!” … I was not even mildy impressed 😉

Then I thought about it, and you know what? I couldn’t think of a better way to celebrate our first year on this journey than with a plain potato. We owe a lot to those potatoes, for better or worse. They kicked off this entire lifestyle change for us, and I honestly don’t think we would be here doing this right now if we hadn’t started with those two weeks of plain potatoes.

Then I started thinking… we should bring the camera along when we go potato shopping again, since that was a part of our first video. So we decided to bring the camera along and “recreate” that first day. Watch the video above to see footage of our first potato shopping trip in June 2018 compared to our shopping trip in June 2019!

Tips for Prepping & Cooking Plain Baked Potatoes

We also wanted to share a few tips with you on how we cooked the majority of our plain potatoes during the two weeks.

The first step is to clean your potatoes. I hate dirt, so I make sure to give them a really good scrub and I always yell at Brian when he doesn’t clean them enough 🙂 (which is always).

After they are clean, be sure to poke holes in your potatoes using a fork. This will prevent steam from building up and causing your potatoes to EXPLODE! I didn’t actually know an explosion was possible (until yesterday when Brian was putting that tip into the video), so I’ll just add that to my ever-growing list of things to be afraid of… mandoline slicers, Instant Pots, exploding potatoes!

We have tried a bunch of different cooking methods, but ultimately, the air fryer has proven to be the quickest and most efficient method!

If you are using an air fryer, preheat it to 350°F and set the timer for 40 minutes. The actual cooking time will vary depending on the size of your potatoes. Brian likes the russet potatoes, which took the full 40 minutes, and I prefer the dutch yellow baby potatoes, which ended up taking 30 minutes (although I feel like Brian overcooked them).

The point is – you’ll need to check on them throughout the cooking process. I would check them after about 20 minutes, stabbing with a fork to see if there is any resistance. If they fall right off the fork, you know they are done! If not, go another 5-10 minutes and check again.

If you do not have an air fryer, you can bake them directly on your oven rack at 350°F. Put a tray below to catch any moisture that might drip out during the cooking process. We find that an average russet potato takes about 60-75 minutes in the oven.

Check out the “Featured Products” section at the bottom of this post for more information about the Air Fryer we used.

After the potatoes are cooked, we like to put them on a tray and refrigerate overnight (or for at least a few hours) before we eat them. It makes them taste better. There is a scientific reason for that, but I am not a scientist so I won’t attempt to explain 🙂

Here is another one from my book of things to be afraid of: Botulism! A lot of people bake their potatoes in tin foil. We do not, but just in case, here is what Brian told me about it:

Do not cool them while wrapped in tin foil. Moisture trapped against the skin can breed clostridium botulinum. The bacteria that causes botulism.

We just refrigerate on a tray without any cover to be safe!

After refrigerating, when you are ready to eat, just microwave for a minute or so and ENJOY!

So What Happened When We Tried
Plain Potatoes Again One Year Later?

Our original plan for this video and blog was to film us potato shopping, show a brief tutorial on how we prepped/cooked our potatoes, and then film a really silly segment of us eating the plain potatoes, saying how gross they were, and loading them up with tasty stuff before we finished them off!

That plan got a bit derailed when we actually got to the tasting. The plain potato smell alone transported us back a year to when this whole thing began. It brought back a ton of emotions for us. We’ve been reflecting for the past few days, and this journey has been the most incredible thing we’ve ever experienced. We are so appreciative of every one of the people who has sent us a kind note, watched one of our videos, and told us how much we have inspired them. It is a very humbling thing for us.

We hope you enjoy the video – it is our honest reaction to eating plain potatoes again after a year. I almost told Brian we should just scrap the entire video, because I felt really exposed filming this one. But I want to share this part of our journey with you, because I know that there are others out there struggling and feeling like we did one year ago. We felt like there was no hope for us… but somehow we proved ourselves wrong.

And then of course, after we filmed the video… we still loaded the remaining potatoes up because… seriously, how tasty does that look? We might post a recipe for these vegan loaded nacho potatoes later on – let us know if you want to see it!

Featured Products:

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Chef’n PalmBrush Vegetable Brush
Stainless Steel Micro-perforated 5-Quart Colander
NuWave Brio Air Fryer