See, this is where you realize you have been tricked all along. This is the world’s longest, most deceptive marketing ploy, and you fell for it, from the potato to the peel to the residual starch coating your fingers.

The oil crackles, sure. On your eager fingers.

The potato mixture streams around the pan in a thousand directions, and the latke batter just won’t sizzle.

“Latkele, latkele, hop in the pan,” you just want to cry. But you began, so you will finish. You will not quit. You scoop out the first pale, wimpy batch (that somehow simultaneously burned the bottom of the pan) and try again.

“Latkele, latkele,” you whisper. “Hop! Hop! Hop!”

It doesn’t hop, so you do instead. “Fry and sizzle!” you cry. “Merrily!,” you add for good measure.

Time has a way of slowing down painfully when making latkes, or maybe it is just that it takes so long.

Seven billion, eight quadrillion years later (I apologize, I may have rounded that figure up), you are finished. You have 18 beautiful, brown latkes which you proudly plate and carry above your head to the table.

They are delicious. And you can almost pretend it was all worth it — the blood, sweat, and tears.

Except…

The latkes are lumpy and brown. Marvelously so, just like the advertisements, in fact. The outside is crispy, the inside is soft and creamy, just like in the blurb above the recipe you read yesterday.

Yet there is no denying one terrible, terrible fact.

They look like they took you 15 minutes to whip together. These lumpy, brown wonders don’t look like they took all afternoon. They don’t look like they warrant your sink piled sky-high with dirtied dishes: three mixing bowls, a grater, a strainer, a mixing spatula and a frying spatula, a burned frying pan, assorted measuring cups. A starch-coated counter and a slippery puddle of potato juice running down your counter and dotting the stove. And what to do with the deep brown oil in the pan itself?

It rankles.

All your effort for this? you think as you face your paltry latke display.

No more. It is time to end the latke myth.

Join me. Calling all coloring book illustrators, recipe developers, and ad designers: Enough of the deception! Latkes are hard work.

They are demanding, they are tedious, and they stick to the bottom of the pan. (The pan which currently sits on my counter, dredged in Bon Ami cleanser.)

And you hapless, helpless gullible masses: Don’t fall for it. One batch of latkes equals one entire afternoon. It takes heart and soul, so only sign up if you don’t mind parting temporarily with yours.

Otherwise, read my lips: Store. Bought. Latkes.

I look back at my plate. It makes me feel self-conscious. After all my hard work, I’d rather have a 16-layer cake, not 18 fragrant, lumpy latkes.

I let my anger sizzle (yes, merrily), but not for long.

There is a lovely plate of latkes calling my name. I pick one up. “You’re beautiful,” I whisper. “And you’re the one I’ll eat, you’ll see.”

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 973)