Day 6 - #WorldWatercolorGroup Baked Potato With Butter watercolor sketch
By Charlie

Baked Potato With Butter

Written by Charlie O'Shields

I had every intention of simply painting some potatoes after the recent decadent offerings, but I ended up baking it and adding butter. It’s still rather simple, as the usual offering here in the States is a “loaded baked potato” which comes stuffed with everything you can imagine. Bacon and cheese are a common addition, but also sometimes sour cream and chives or even broccoli can be added to party. Since it takes about 50 to 60 minutes to bake a potato properly, I don’t have them very often. I lack both the patience to wait and the foresight to start one in time for dinner. But thankfully, I love potatoes in just about every preparation and there seems to be no end to the ways you can prepare them. As a kid, though, if given my vote, I would always choose either French fries or mashed potatoes.

My favorite French fries were the thick cut ones when I was growing up. These were also referred to as Steak fries, but my father was typically the only one who actually got the steak to accompany them. I liked them because they were not as crunchy and it seemed more like there was an actual potato involved. We would also sometimes have beef stew with potatoes and vegetables. This was served in a Crock-Pot® that had been slow cooking all day and we would line up to fill our bowls. My dad would always go first and fish out all of the chunks of meat, so by the time I was able to get some, it was mostly vegetarian. Still, the meat-flavored potatoes were deliciously satisfying. Actually, pretty much everything slow cooked for a day came out in the same mushy consistency, even the meat, and all tasted the same anyway.

Mashed potatoes were one of the crowd favorites at family gatherings when I was young. We would all meet up at my grandparent’s farm and there would be a couple slow cookers filled with them. At least, that was the hope. One year, there was only one and it was devastating. These were the days before social media and emails, so potluck dinners were a bit of a gamble. People were putting just a spoonful or two on their plates to ensure there was enough for everyone. It was just a big tease in the end and failed to satisfy anyone properly. But, as luck would have it, the same miscommunication created extra desserts that year, so there was a blissfully happy ending after all. Later in the week, my mom served baked potatoes and getting my own felt like a little trophy. After the recent potato famine, there was just something extra special about that little baked potato with butter.

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Sennelier L’Aquarelle:  Opera Rose, Cobalt Turquoise, Quinacridone Gold, Burnt Sienna, and Ultramarine Deep. Lamy Safari Al Star pen with Platinum Carbon with black ink in a little red cloth hardbound l’aquarelle journal I found in a Paris shop.
 Day 6 - #WorldWatercolorGroup Baked Potato With Butter watercolor sketch

Charlie O'Shields

Creator of Doodlewash, founder of World Watercolor Month (July), World Watercolor Group, and host of the Sketching Stuff Podcast. Sharing watercolor illustrations and stories while proudly featuring talented artists from all over the world!

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25 thoughts on “Baked Potato With Butter”

  2. Your paintings always make my mouth water. I rarely bake potatoes now for various reasons but I got through my student years eating many a baked potato with either baked beans and cheese or tuna and corn. When I was a wee girl, I sometimes used to take a small baked potato, wrapped in foil, to have as my play piece (snack) during winter. So good.

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  3. I’m hungry again. Charlie you have succeeded in motivating me to eat, or crave something. Lol. Love this drawing. Hey, I would like to know what your favorite meal or dessert is. I started a post on my blog and I’d like you to tell me on that post. I think it would be interesting to have a collection of everyone’s choices, for me and others to see. Thanks Charlie.

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  9. Steaming hot potatoes with butter, what could be better on a cold autumn day, oh and the smell of the thing is like nothing else, simple and delicious….I hate the wait in the oven too, so I start it off in the microwave for 10 minutes, then crisp up in the oven, as close as you can get to pure oven baked, in fast time 😀….so pleased it is early morning, otherwise I would be popping a potatoe in the oven right now, maybe later I will recreate your painting?

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      1. Ah well you see, I ended up spending too much time at the yard this evening, the forecast is horrid so the ponies have come inside to the warm dry stable, snugly! Time to think but not to do, and it would have been perfect to have come home too, a nice warm jacket, mmm. Now sat listening to the rain, so it was worth my decision, and loss of a hot spud!

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