Healthy Eating III: Return of the Solanum Tuberosum
Ours is not a house that likes potatoes.
Individually, both of my flatmates and myself are all quite fond of them, whether as a simple baked potato snack, mashed with a little milk and garlic, boiled soft and mixed with an omelette, thrown into a stew for extra carbohydrate ...
Unfortunately, while we are fond of them, we never manage to eat them regularly. This means that half a bag of potatoes will generally be squirrelled away someplace where it will, to assert its vital nature, either turn green or try to send out shoots in a search for sustenance. In one instance, we were cooking roast chicken for a fancy dinner (guest included) and, an hour before it was ready, started looking for spuds to roast with it. You can't have a roast without potatoes. We dug up a plastic bag in which the essential roots had started putrefying. There was liquid in that bag. The smell, once disturbed, was remarkable, clinging to bowls and hands ... we had to wash everything three times before it went away and at that very time we received a phone call from our guest asking if she could come early to help? Her offer was politely declined.
I've also used the humble potato as a prop for a roleplaying game, where I traded the rare herb 'solanum tuberosum' to a little Fairy. Considering that it was set in Medieval Europe, it was very rare! I wish I could have seen her face, though, when she unwrapped it and found the tendrilly, damp, squidgy mess of what a potato becomes in our house ...
When I started writing this blog, I did a smidgen of research about the potato. It's been cultivated in South America for seven thousand years, and was first grown on the chilly, arid heights of the Andes, flourishing where other crops whimpered and fled. It didn't reach Europe until just after the Middle Ages, where it was somewhat distrusted by the populace. Why? Heh, read this:
The potato is a member of the nightshade family and its leaves are, indeed, poisonous. A potato left too long in the light will begin to turn green. The green skin contains a substance called solanine which can cause the potato to taste bitter and even cause illness in humans. Such drawbacks were understood in Europe, but the advantages, generally, were not.
They are very nutritious, and in time became a staple all over Europe. (Ireland came to depend on them, and in the Potato Famine its population halved, through starvation and emigration. That's a kick-arse little vegetable.
(from http://www.indepthinfo.com/potato/history.shtml)
The New Zealand sweet potato, kumara, is also reckoned to come from South America, and Thor Heyerdahl cited this in his theory that Maori and other Polynesians originated from that continent.
Interestingly, the kumara that we eat today aren't the historical variety, which were about the size of a finger. In the early 1850s, according to one source, a larger variety was imported, again from the Americas. Go figure.
(from http://www.kumara.co.nz/about.shtml)
But back to potatoes, the non-sweet variety. I tried, in the early days, to find a place to keep the potatoes where they wouldn't actually go soggy - in a cupboard, in the official vegetable rack (this is where they turn green and putrid), leaving them on the bench, but by now I make something of a point of only buying potatoes in very small quantities so that we can enjoy them without potato zombies spoiling (in) our day. However. I'd been wondering, for about a week, where that odd, earthy smell in the kitchen was coming from. Finally in the mood for housekeeping, I opened up the bottom cupboard and pulled out a few bags of sugar and rolled oats.
I found a plastic bag behind them.
From it, long blossoming tendrils groped out into the larger cupboard. When I peered inside the bag I realised that most of the potato lumps had gone spiky like hedgehogs as they, too, attempted escape. One had actually reduced itself to black earth, bravely sacrificing itself that the others might have the sustenance to grow and conquer our kitchen. I am really scared about what would have happened if they'd found the sugar.
Anyway, I thrust a stick in the bag and carried it, at arm-plus-stick-length, to our mulch pile, carefully cutting away the plastic from the necks of the conqueror spuds. Such fortitude deserved to live.
The story has a happy ending (for the potatoes, anyway).
Epilogue: I remember reading once about a person who discovered how wasps reproduce and, ever after, was afraid of eating eggs. After seeing the pseudopods of those spuds, I, well ...
This is not a house that likes potatoes.
Individually, both of my flatmates and myself are all quite fond of them, whether as a simple baked potato snack, mashed with a little milk and garlic, boiled soft and mixed with an omelette, thrown into a stew for extra carbohydrate ...
Unfortunately, while we are fond of them, we never manage to eat them regularly. This means that half a bag of potatoes will generally be squirrelled away someplace where it will, to assert its vital nature, either turn green or try to send out shoots in a search for sustenance. In one instance, we were cooking roast chicken for a fancy dinner (guest included) and, an hour before it was ready, started looking for spuds to roast with it. You can't have a roast without potatoes. We dug up a plastic bag in which the essential roots had started putrefying. There was liquid in that bag. The smell, once disturbed, was remarkable, clinging to bowls and hands ... we had to wash everything three times before it went away and at that very time we received a phone call from our guest asking if she could come early to help? Her offer was politely declined.
I've also used the humble potato as a prop for a roleplaying game, where I traded the rare herb 'solanum tuberosum' to a little Fairy. Considering that it was set in Medieval Europe, it was very rare! I wish I could have seen her face, though, when she unwrapped it and found the tendrilly, damp, squidgy mess of what a potato becomes in our house ...
When I started writing this blog, I did a smidgen of research about the potato. It's been cultivated in South America for seven thousand years, and was first grown on the chilly, arid heights of the Andes, flourishing where other crops whimpered and fled. It didn't reach Europe until just after the Middle Ages, where it was somewhat distrusted by the populace. Why? Heh, read this:
The potato is a member of the nightshade family and its leaves are, indeed, poisonous. A potato left too long in the light will begin to turn green. The green skin contains a substance called solanine which can cause the potato to taste bitter and even cause illness in humans. Such drawbacks were understood in Europe, but the advantages, generally, were not.
They are very nutritious, and in time became a staple all over Europe. (Ireland came to depend on them, and in the Potato Famine its population halved, through starvation and emigration. That's a kick-arse little vegetable.
(from http://www.indepthinfo.com/potato/history.shtml)
The New Zealand sweet potato, kumara, is also reckoned to come from South America, and Thor Heyerdahl cited this in his theory that Maori and other Polynesians originated from that continent.
Interestingly, the kumara that we eat today aren't the historical variety, which were about the size of a finger. In the early 1850s, according to one source, a larger variety was imported, again from the Americas. Go figure.
(from http://www.kumara.co.nz/about.shtml)
But back to potatoes, the non-sweet variety. I tried, in the early days, to find a place to keep the potatoes where they wouldn't actually go soggy - in a cupboard, in the official vegetable rack (this is where they turn green and putrid), leaving them on the bench, but by now I make something of a point of only buying potatoes in very small quantities so that we can enjoy them without potato zombies spoiling (in) our day. However. I'd been wondering, for about a week, where that odd, earthy smell in the kitchen was coming from. Finally in the mood for housekeeping, I opened up the bottom cupboard and pulled out a few bags of sugar and rolled oats.
I found a plastic bag behind them.
From it, long blossoming tendrils groped out into the larger cupboard. When I peered inside the bag I realised that most of the potato lumps had gone spiky like hedgehogs as they, too, attempted escape. One had actually reduced itself to black earth, bravely sacrificing itself that the others might have the sustenance to grow and conquer our kitchen. I am really scared about what would have happened if they'd found the sugar.
Anyway, I thrust a stick in the bag and carried it, at arm-plus-stick-length, to our mulch pile, carefully cutting away the plastic from the necks of the conqueror spuds. Such fortitude deserved to live.
The story has a happy ending (for the potatoes, anyway).
Epilogue: I remember reading once about a person who discovered how wasps reproduce and, ever after, was afraid of eating eggs. After seeing the pseudopods of those spuds, I, well ...
This is not a house that likes potatoes.
posted by theamazingcatherine | 4:31 pm
2 Comments:
heh - how to tell if the Spuds are developing Scuds.
Alan
[giggle]
Try storing them in a pottery jar.
Steph
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