Rice is nice
That isn't what she 'said'
I agree, poppin' a tater in the microwave is plain lazy.
Taters are rather bland and require some effort to make them
even somewhat appealing.
a poor man’s staple
From
wiki:
China is now the world's largest potato producing country, and nearly a third of the world's potatoes are harvested in China and India. More generally, the geographic shift of potato production has been away from wealthier countries toward lower-income areas of the world, although the degree of this trend is ambiguous.