I have eaten them raw ever since I was a kid. I used to eat whole ones (peeled) but now I just grab pieces or slices when they're being prepared. Yum.

My friend cowboyx always eats chunks of raw potato sprinkled with a little salt, and I've picked the habit up from him. Here in the south of England, I've discovered a potato stall at the farmers' market. He has many varieties, and will talk to you about them for as long as you care to listen. I always sample a bit raw when cooking. Nom.

Huh, never tried it.

I used to when I was a kid. Soapy. Now, once in a while, I'll just gnaw a frozen fry or two if I'm making them.

(I liked to steal bits of raw hamburger, too, when my mother was cooking. Nobody thought anything of it then.)

Count me as another that has eaten pieces of potato raw since I was a kid. If my mom was peeling potatoes, or making fries, she'd give me a slice or two to eat. I still do it when I'm peeling potatoes. Yummmy. I preferred raw veggies over cooked back then.

Like Pips, I used to eat small bits of raw hamburger too, though my mom would give them to me. Hey, steak tartare! I had a sophisticated palate for a young kid...

me too! mmmm, solanine.

Yep, always eat a few when they're sitting there on the cutting board, all chopped up and vulnerable. Got it from my dad.

A favorite midnight snack.

heretics.

Freaks.

I might eat a little piece while someone's cooking.

really? raw? doesn't that cause herpies?

Is it true that eating raw potatoes is bad for your health, or is that just one of those old wives' myths, and if so, how did it come about???

PS. Yes, I have.

i was only joking. ;)

One of my cousins eats almost everything raw, but we think that's because she has pica.

You people are wrong and God sees your wrongness.

*holds up two potato ricers in the form of a cross*

Put me in the 'yes' column, please.

It's after midnight and thanks to an idea put in my head by this post I am eating a raw potato.

If someone's chopping them up I might grab a couple pieces. Never really thought about it before.

Weirdos.

Every spring my mother would plant our garden, which included row after row of potatoes. We would hoe and weed the garden on warm summer afternoons, hoeing and weeding and my little sister and I digging our bare toes in the dirt down to where it was cool and damp.

And every autumn my mother would round up us kids (my four brothers, little sister, and myself) for the harvest. Potatoes are much hardier than the other vegetables and berries we grew, so we would always leave them for last to encourage a bigger potato harvest. Sometimes we waited so late that we dug them in the snow. But if the weather was still warm, we would dig them up with hoes and forks, laughing at any of the siblings unskilled enough (meaning: all of us) to have speared a potato or five.

My sister and I were too young to wield a sharp garden instrument, so we were in charge of collecting the potatoes and bringing them to the wheelbarrow. Once full, one of my brothers would push the wheelbarrow up the hill and dump them in a pile closer to the house. We would do this for hours until the pile was quite large. Someone would pull out the garden hose and we would wash all of the potatoes off. I would pick through the pile and pull out a little one here and a tiny one there, one for me and one for Tiger our Brittney Spaniel, born the same month I was.

I loved the texture of the raw potato on my tongue and its sharp starchiness, but not as much as Tiger loved those baby potatoes, and I loved feeding them to him.

Two years ago I was at my parents' house in October and helped my mother with the potato harvest. With all of the kids long moved out of the house, the few rows she had planted were in my grandparents' garden, not hers. It only took us a few hours, my mother and me, to dig, wash, and move the potatoes to the root cellar my grandfather dug in the hillside years before I was born.

I laughed when my mother speared a potato with her fork, which didn't happen as often as I sliced one with mine. I missed the excitement and the activity of it being a family affair, but still loved the warm dirt between my bare toes.

:) rhapsodie... that read like one of my favorite books.

You people are freaks.

rhapsodie: Winner.