Washing away the old year, gorging on the new: Bathtubs and potatoes

First, as the old year ends, the bad: A few words on British bathtubs. Yes, a rant.

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I have never seen such a collection of useless items for cleansing the body in my life. How hard should it be to design a bathtub? All that’s required is a deep porcelain-clad metal or acrylic tub about five feet long (or longer), two feet wide and maybe 20 inches deep, plus an exit for the water and some means of filling it, i.e., faucets and a tap. (I could wax eloquent on taps, and might yet some other time, but this is about tubs.)

Last summer, about a month before deciding to sell our flat and buy a house, we had a new bathroom installed. I pored over the plumbing catalogs until I found a bathtub that was both long and wide and had very few tricky bits. In short, one could get into it, sit in it, the water would slosh around one’s body and one could then attend to washing all parts of said body without undue contortions. I did note, a week or so after buying it, that the back edge was rolled a bit, like a hard acrylic pillow. However, to thus recline would mean one’s hips were shoved to the narrowest place in the tub, making for two mini-lakes of water.

Huh? What do you mean, you might well ask, the narrowest place in the tub? Isn’t a tub sort of like this?

All the curvy parts are on the outside. The walls are straight, and it's as wide at the top as the bottom, at the front as the back. Bliss!

Only in America.

Butt-squisher bathtubs
In England (and Ireland, as I rediscovered many times over many, many years), tubs are sculpted not to fit the human body or even to leave it well enough alone as US tubs do, but to fit some cockamamie idea of the designer.

See the little curvy shelf on the left. Note how narrow it gets at the bottom. And this is a fairly plain British bath.

Why, one might wonder, should a bathtub be kidney-shaped, like Liberace’s pool?

Beats heck out of me. Even the extra-long tub in the house we are renting until our new one is built is shapey. It has nifty little dolphin shaped indents extending down the sides so that, in places, the tub is narrower at the top than on the bottom.  Oy vay!

However, wet is wet, and I’ve adapted. Still, I spent this afternoon looking for US tub imports on the Internet, because I’m fairly certain that the first change we will make in the new house is to switch out the builder’s tub in my bathroom (Simon’s only has a shower anyway) for something that does what a tub should do: Fill with water, sit there without molesting the bather, and empty when finished.

American Standard, my dream bath

I’d like one like the first one above―an American Standard―if I can find it. Or import it. Or does anyone want to bring it to me as checked luggage? Don't care much for the beige; please bring me one in plain white.

Never too many potatoes!

Now, as the new year begins, the good. A few words about British roasted potatoes. Yes, a love song.

I have never seen so many different kinds of potatoes in my life. And, since my husband’s middle initial is P (which I say stands for Potato, but he thinks stands for Piers), potatoes are important.

For example, tonight I’m making roasted King Edward potatoes. These are floury, and particularly good for British roast potatoes. First one peels them, then parboils them, then beats them up a bit by shaking them, drained, in the pot. Then one rolls them around in lovely duck fat already melted on the bottom of a baking tray and roasts them in a medium oven for 50-60 minutes. When they’re done, the roughened up outsides are delightfully crunchy, while the inside is delightfully mellow. (Sound effect: Lips smacking)

Notice that these potatoes are cooked in duck fat, which one can buy easily in any supermarket in England, unless one truly prefers chicken or goose fat which are also available.

Delicious, duck-fat potatoes

These are NOT American-style “oven-fried in hardly any light oil” potatoes. No, ma’am. These are delicious potatoes. Irresistible potatoes. Potatoes to make Weight Watchers® weep.

Which sort of brings me back to the bathtub thing. Why―in a nation so dedicated to the true miracle of roasted potatoes in duck fat―would they design tubs that are narrow where one sits and narrower at the bottom than the top, overall? I mean, isn’t that sort of trying to pack ten pounds of potatoes into a five-pound bag?

Happy New Year!