Picture it now: The Great Eastern European Tater Tot Adventure™ – bringing tiny cylinders of shredded, fried potato joy to the land of borscht, dumplings, and pickled wonders!
The Entrepreneur Phase
To perfect the recipe, our amiga, our приятель, spent many hours perfecting the recipe in her apartment. She started small, with a mere 1,500kg of potatoes, and the gentle support of her loving husband.
It is important to get buy-in from all stake-holders, including the cat.
Our friend’s cat seems a bit dubious.
Creative Approaches / Rethinking the Tot
Food scientist in both Ukraine and the US are collaborating on an exciting new presentation of the tot.
The Tater Tot Rubik’s Cube
A perfect cube of tots in six flavors/colors:
Classic golden
Beet-pink (borscht inspired)
Dill-green
Salo-white (porky goodness)
Paprika-red
Cheese-yellow
Challenge: Can you align the flavors by color before hunger wins and you start eating them?
The research department of WLBOTT-Ukraine works on the structural issues related to the Rubik’s Tot.
Market research shows that the Rubik’s Tot will be a delightful addition to the potato cannon.
Positive reviews from our приятель:
Elder JimZim’s Intellectual Property Contribution
Elder JimZim has generously offered to give WLBOTT a royalty-free license to his recent patent. He has developed a method of creating a structurally sound potato entity that maximized the friable surface area.
Gentle peeps – while waiting for the electrician to come between 8am today and a week from next Tuesday, I had time to compose this offer.
I have a patent pending that I would be willing to sub-license, royalty free, to the Tater Tot Queen. This product will revolutionize the tot eating experience and supply Ukraine with much needed capital to defend themselves from the Russians.
As I laid out in my US patent application, the potato was a lowly root vegetable imported to Europe from Peru in the early 1500’s. The Brits ruined the veg by just boiling the heck out of it. In 1845, Chef Pierre Ratatouille of Pomme de Terre France introduced the concept of frying the ‘apple of the earth’ in boiling lard. His first experiment was frying the whole potato, but quickly determined he needed to Julianne the spud before frying. And Voila!, the French Fry was born.
“Mes yeux sont là-haut.” – The last words ever heard by Pierre Ratatouille, muttered by Marie Antoinette
Post WWII, Americans were all for fast-prepared meals and in 1954, Dr. Sue Blonkins, of the Idaho Potato Council Spud Science Lab (IPCSSL), created a new way of shredding the potato and then forming a truncated cylinder with the shredded potato with a binder. This produced a rough-surfaced cylinder, covered with small spikes caused by shredded potato protrusions outside the base potato cylinder.
Early prototypes:
Upon frying, she was amazed at the texture, crispness and yumminess produced by the potato spikes extending beyond the main cylinder. Through many trials, Dr. Blonkins determined the optimum spike protrusion ratio (SPR) was 1.04 (SPR = max spiked tot diameter/ main base cylinder diameter). She decided to name the invention ‘Tater Tot’ after the nickname for her son. Unfortunately, Dr. Blonkins passed away prematurely due to cardiovascular disease from too much tot consumption and was awarded (posthumously) the James Beard Award for lifetime contributions to American cuisine..
In 1956, Samuel Birdseye of Bemidji Minnesota invented a way to flash fry vegetables to allow shipping from tot factories to grocery stores across the land for eager housewives to feed their families. And the rest is tot history.
(As an aside, the inferior Crinkle Cut potatoes were invented in the breakaway Idaho Spud Sanatorium around this same time and exist today).
If you are still reading this, I will get to my pending patent. The concept is to maximize the Spike Surface Area Ratio (SSAR = individual spike surface area/spike volume) and minimize the Spike Voidage Ratio (SVR = decimal equivalent of the percentage of base cylinder surface area NOT covered with spikes). The details of solving this tortuous, optimization problem can be found in my paper ‘Increasing Tater Tot Consumer Satisfaction Through Really Hard Optimization’ published in the latest edition of Spud Science (Vol 23, Issue 7, pg 23-34). Solution to this optimization was accomplished on the Crossroads super computer at Los Alamos National Labs.
I have named and trademarked this invention WLBOTT’s Spikey Tots.
Below is a picture of the optimized Spikey Tot. Unfortunately, my research funding has in been withdrawn by RFK Jr since tots are a processed food. Therefore, I didn’t have the funds to properly color the Spikey Tot image below that nice brown hue.
Elder JimZim
Elder JimZim’s patent prototypes may need an upgraded user interface.
