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December 2007 
Potato Stories
Posted on Dec 30th, 2007
by 
Celtic Knot
Celtic Knot
As I mention in my profile, I'm writing a book on the potato, due out next year. Whenever I talk about the book, people often have really neat stories to share about this humblest of vegetables.
One woman told me about her mom who has a "Potato Circle" -- every week a group of ladies get together to try out potato recipes. One guy named his cat "Potato." For others, potatoes are comfort food. One of the things that attracted me to the potato was its underdog nature.
So, what are your potato stories?
Access: Public
I sent you a message about Jersey Royal potatoes,
some extra facts -
Cut a flat base under a large potato and wrap it in silver / coloured foil use this as a base to arrange a winter green arrangement with holly ivy etc it works just as well as oasis and keeps the arrangement moist.
Comfrey leaves soaked in a bucket for a few weeks make the best fertiliser for potatoes,
studies show it works better than proprietry fertilisers.
Seaweed as a fertiliser gives flavour a boost.
Don't waste potato peelings we have chickens and they love cooked veg peelings with layers mash. If you have no chickens compost them.
Hi Zephyr!
I haven't had the pleasure of tasting Jersey Royals, –yet – but the way they're grown with seaweed, they must be delicious. From people I've spoken to across the pond, North American potatoes taste rather different than British ones.
Thanks for all your potato tips!
This is a story from a friend of mine, Dipti, who's given me permission to post her stories.
“Saying it with….a baked potato…. yes, not with flowers or anything diamond - when i moved to montreal and rahul and i used to argue to appease me - rahul used to get me wendy's baked potato on his way back form work…i could not eat the hamburgers but loved the baked potato. this used to always bring a smile to my face and my anger would evaporate.
“Also, i remember during my childhood my mother used to, with other aunts and neighbours, make tons and tons of potato chips - the women used to slice the potatoes in big bunches and the kids were asked to lay them out flat on plastic or cloth sheets - on mats spread out on the courtyard of the house. This used to be such fun task - as kids we used to keep chewing on the raw slices of the potato's and all the elders used to warn us that we will be down with a stomach ache soon - but our stomachs were resilient to the rawness of the potato and the bodies to the scorching heat of the summer sun. It was also the kids job to later collect all the dried up peels and make things with the same, and later as the chips dried, we boxed them in tin boxes that were stored away in the huge kitchen pantry for a later day when it was raining, and we'd need to fry the dried potato chips.
Here is a fun weblink for information http://www.potatoexpo.com/ Our kids always enjoyed making curly fries with a special spiral cutter. They would take turns cranking the handle and trying to be the one with the longest curl!
I am not an expert on potatoes. When I was filming them, the gardener would cut one organic potato, cut it in half, let it set in the sun til it seemed to have some green on the top. Then he dug a hole about 12” deep. Each half grew into about 24 potatoes. I could see that there doesn't NOT have to be any hunger in the world. I feel that must be political to have people starve. He did tell me a story of back in history a king put guards around the potato fields to make them more valuable as before that the potato was cut down.
The story about the king's potatoes is one of my favourites about the spud!
When I was training and competing as a runner, cyclist, and triathlete potatoes were part of my daily feedings. I am most powerful when I eat potatoes.
And soooo easy to prepare….Roasted, split open and filled with fresh chopped tomatoes, shallots, peppers, cooked broccoli, and any other yummy veggies, with a melting of soy cheese. mmmmmmm.
The new fads in diets have undermined some really good foods! The key to that is moderation. And there is always the followup and stories about the gunnysack the ol' time sacks they used to be in all the time. Especially the sexy picture of Marilyn Monroe wearing an Idaho Potato Sack!
From Anna Fuerstenberg, theatre director, writer, actress, and friend, writes:
When we first came to Montreal from a refugee camp in Stuttgart, we were really poor. At first we lived in an attic room in Mile End and all four of us, mama papa brother and I slept in one bed….
Finally we moved into a large apartment on Hutchison avenue and mama rented out rooms to five adults. My brother and I shared the tiny maid's room behind the kitchen, next to the shed that was not heated.
One day my mother sent me out to get four potatoes, one onion, some matzoh meal, and a tiny jar of cooking oil. Usually we went to the French dep on the corner, but there was some kind of holiday and he was closed. So I had to tramp through the snow to St Joseph Boulevard to a Jewish grocer, whom we seldom used.
He packed the potatoes the onion and the egg and a split of matzoh meal very carefully, and I paid up the fourteen cents or so, a fortune back in the early fifties. He looked down over the brown bag neatly tied with string and smiled broadly as he nodded complicitly and said: “So, I see you are having a party.”
Anyone who knows that these are the ingredients of latkes or potato pancakes knows that yes, we were having a party and we were so poor that potato pancakes were all that was served.
My earliest memories were when I was a wee one on the farm. When you could differentiate between a weed and a potato plant, you weeded the garden…when you learned to cut the 'eyes' of the potato off, you were planting them…as soon as you could hold a pitchfork, you dug them up…when you could handle the wheelbarrow, you wheeled them into the dirt cellar to store them…and during the winter months, when times were tough, you fried huge pans of potatoes with onions and that was you breakfast, lunch and dinner. One thing for certain, they filled you up and we never went hungry.
yummmmmmeeeeeee
You can't feed my enough pots, or onions, or garlic.
This jaguar is salivating.
What a wonderful kid-growing-up story. Makes me all warm and cozy inside. Mmmmm love and family and togetherness mmmmm
Back in the Philippines, my memories of potatoes are having them mixed with meat stews, corned beef, and one-meal beef brisket soups. My brothers and I loved mashing the potatoes and mixing them in our rice with the gravy or soup and the meat chunks and the bone marrows - hmmmmm! Another family favorite was Mom's chicken potato salad, a party essential. When I relocated in Nepal, my palate had an adventure with such variety of potato species and styles of cooking them - from spicy and tangy achars (something in between salad and pickle), as a vegetavle curry (alone or mixed with carrots or gourds or courgettes or green beans or peas or eggplants, etc.), as pancakes called parothas or rotis. And they're great too as french fries modified by adding cumin and fenugreek seeds and/or garlic, as jacket potatoes, mashed potatoes, and more. Can't live without potatoes.