The Potato Museum Blog: Potatoheads Talking

Spuds on NPR

On New Year's Eve we donned our potato skins and did an interview with Melissa Block for All Things Considered on National Public Radio. Her producer called us in line with the United Nations' dubbing of 2008 as the International Year of the Potato.
For those of you who do not know our story, we started out in the food history biz focused on the powerful potato. Tom began The Potato Museum in 1975 as a classroom project for his students at the International School of Brussels in Belgium. It grew as word spread, its pioneering museum about a food effort turning up a few years later as part of two major exhibitions--the Smithsonian's Seeds of Change event for the Quincentenary and Canada's remarkable Amazing Potato exhibit at Ottawa's National Museum of Science and Technology.
The FOOD Museum On Line and this Blog is an offshoot of that venture. Listen below...

Farmer-To-Be Bonds With Potato Cutter

Neophyte farmer-in-training John dives into the arcane world of the potato cutter earlier this spring at Riverbank Farm, Roxbury, Connecticut.

If You Build A Better Peeler, They Will Come, Maybe

As the world continues to explode in some areas, and in other areas, people trek to the beach, a new potato peeler makes its debut. This time, it's a glove version--apparently it's a really, really roughed up glove, because you can fondle a spud right out of its skin with these gauntlets.

The " As Seen On TV" Tater Mitts people promise "no knives!, no nicks and cuts!"  To the potato?

King Harry Crowned Top Plant

Wood Prairie Farm in Bridgewater, Maine, an organic, family-run farm has won an award for its new organic potato variety, King Harry. Apparently the variety, boasting hairy leaves, has proven to be resistant to incursions from both Colorado potato beetles and potato leafhoppers. The potato was field tested by Megan and Jim Gerritsen, farm owners. It was under development for several years by breeders at Cornell University.

The Gerritsens entered King Harry in a Mailorder Gardening Association competition and won the Green Thumb Award for being one of the top five plants of the year. It's unusual for a veg to win this prize, triumphing over showy ornamentals. But Harry does have enticing pale purple blossoms....

And requires no insecticide application.

The Maine Potato News informed us of this prize.

Hash Stashed in Mash

As reported recently by www.shortnews.com:

Jailer Arrested for Putting the Pot in Potatoes

Robert Earl Hannon, a prison guard at Laflore County Jail in Greenwood, Mississippi, is free on $15,000 bond after he was arrested and charged with smuggling marijuana into the prison inside his lunch.

According to Leflore County Sheriff Ricky Banks the Mississippi Bureau of Narcotics had been investigating how various contraband items were making their way into the prison when they apprehended Hannon.

The guard's alleged smuggling activities were discovered after his lunch was found with a large serving of mashed potatoes. He was known not to eat potatoes. Two ounces of marijuana and $200 cash were discovered buried in the mash.

Starchy Art

According to a report from China News, each year The Starchy Gallery in East Dulwich, London, runs a potato art competition. Gallery owner Jo David says of the potato: "You start to look at one, you can see faces in it already."

This year's winners produced a spud rendition of a British singer. You can view some of the entries, as well as a video here.

Italian Woman Escapes Lethal "Spud"

Ah, the lingering joys of war---last week Olga Mauriello bought some potatoes at her local market in the small town of San Giorgio a Cermano near Naples, Italy. As she was washing her dirt-covered spuds, she discovered that one of them appeared to be a pine cone-shaped hand grenade. Police arrived and safely detonated the live grenade, and later reported that it was dug up in a potato field in France. The grenade was of a type commonly used in World War II.

( At right: Potato or grenade? www.bolender.com)

Lincoln Head P. Chip?

Yes, we saw it with our own eyes--for sale on Ebay for extremely specialized collectors--a spud chip greatly resembling the 16th President, Abe Lincoln. Alert potato tracker Nolan K. informed us about this but, alas, we responded too late.

Did anyone out there buy this?

Fasting with Veggies

Just had a call from a person about to begin a fast for spiritual reasons. He asked if a potato were a fruit or a vegetable--apparently veggies are ok on this fast. So I said that the spud was  in the vegetable column and definitely not a fruit. I explained, however, that many veggies , botanically speaking, are fruits because anything edible that develops from a flower is a fruit.

But the potato, an underground tuber, the storehouse for the potato plant of excess nutrients the plant does not need at the time, may not exactly be what the spiritual fasting gods ordered either, growing in the dark as it does.....

Britain to Test GMO Potatoes

Potatoes developed by the German company BASF  to have resistance to blight will be grown in trials in Britain next year.The GMO spuds will not be grown for human or animal consumption but rather for industrial use. ( The potato's starch is used in degradable plastics, cosmetics, medicines and more.)

Those in favor of GMO altered foods point out that  modifying the potato in this manner may well be preferable to the heavy spraying of chemical fungicides necessary to combat "late blight."  The fungus-like pathogen that wiped out potato harvests in Ireland in the mid 1800's continues to exist today in potato-growing areas around the world.

Many in Britain are opposed to the growing of any GMO food plants for any purpose.

According to today's Reuter's piece, " Britain's largest organic certification body, the Soil Asssociation, said, however, it was dismayed by the decision, adding there would be no market for GMO potatoes in Britain.

"The government is ignoring what consumers want to eat and their health and safety...The chances of anyone in the UK willingly buying GM potato crisps or chips are zero. This trial is a monumental waste of time and money," Soil Association policy director Peter Melchett said."

For an overview of GM crops read this from NewScientist.com.