The Potato Museum Blog: Potatoheads Talking

Happy Thanksgiving--Pray for Peace and Pass the Potatoes!

"May the frost never afflict your spuds.
May the leaves of your cabbage always be free from worms. May the crows never pick your haystack.
If you inherit a donkey, may she be in foal. "Gaelic blessing p.s. May your mashies be rich with cream and butter, may your bird be moist, may your rutabaga leave them begging for more, may your pies be so superlative as to leave you and your guests lying  around the fire praising Demeter and her handmaidens, and, above all,  may your gratitude be boundless.( Mashies from www.reluctantgourmet.com/mashed.htm)

Zimbabwe: Potatoes: Critical to Food Security

NOT deterred by the high input costs, Nancy Munyati (46), a retired working class woman, urged on by a rising urban market demand for potatoes started cultivating potatoes on a small scale about two years ago.

Munyati who has never looked back realised that the rising demand was mainly due to the fact that potatoes were fast emerging as a substitute for household staple crops such as maize, rice and wheat. In addition to this, many people find potatoes much easier to prepare and cook using many different recipes.

Just recently, the Government, in a bid to promote potato farming, declared the crop a strategic and potential food security crop. However, despite having generated a lot of interest from farmers, potato farming has been hampered by the non-availability of seed and chemical fertilizers which are rather too expensive and incessant power outages have also affected irrigation for the crop.

from The Herald (Harare) June 14, 2006  byTonderai Matonho.  Read the full article here.

Photo image

International Year of the Potato announced

The potato is the fourth most important food crop in the world, with great potential as a food source for future generations. The United Nations (UN) has declared 2008 as the International Year of the Potato, in Resolution 4/2005 of the Conference of the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations, adopted on 25 November 2005.

This major event will present many opportunities to raise the profile of potato among civil society as an important world food staple, and to raise the profile of the potato as a contributor to the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs).

The UN Resolution notes that the potato is a staple food in the diet of the world’s population. It affirms the need to focus world attention on the role that the potato can play in providing food security and eradicating poverty in support of achieving internationally agreed development goals, including the Millennium Development Goals.

Read more about this and The International Potato Center based in Lima, Peru.

Previous Interntional Years:

2002 International Year of Mountains
2003 International Year of Freshwater
2004 International Year of Rice
2005 International Year of Microcredit
2006 International Year of Deserts and Desertification

Praising Potatoes

Tell us why you like potatoes and what you want us to feature here.

Over the 25 plus years we have been growing The Potato Museum, visitors have told us their potato stories....many have been emotional, others funny, all were memorable.  An 80 year old East Berlin lady told how during the war, she saved peelings to make a potato cake.  Another woman told us all she got one wartime Christmas was a potato.  A third woman revealed that her family escaped advancing troops by juicing their store of potatoes which was the most nourishing and portable food available.

One chef described passing a critical  test in his French culinary school in which all the students had to  create an original dish featuring potatoes.  Jean-Louis Palladin once prepared an entire   feast, all five courses featured potatoes.   This was for a Japanese TV show we helped arrange.   One man sent us a photo of his dad holding a prized potato he had grown.  Other potato enthusiasts have shared poems, songs, artwork, jewelry--you name it.

What's your story....what drives your passion for potatoes?