I was reading someone’s story about entering a bookstore and just knowing they wanted a book. They were sitting on the floor being surrounded by some choices that they pulled. I don’t need to name them all but one caught my attention “The Potato book” it was a 1973 potato anthology forward by Truman Capote. But what really caught my interest was I had bought a potato book way back when and was inspired to see if i still had it.
I had donated a bunch cookbook a few years ago to a rummage store because I needed the room and you know I don’t cook. The second reason is immaterial because I do like to buy old, used and new cookbooks. I’m fascinated, intrigued and sometimes it adds to the conversations around me. People love to talk about food and so do I. I went through some books in the pantry, and I realized I still had kept several of my cookbooks especially the ones that were given to me or ones I just like and want around. well, I was delighted and relieved to see I still had my ‘potato book’. Now this book is nothing like the one they were writing about yet I was so happy to find mine, so I sat down and started to read it.
it gives a short history of the potato how it came in a Spanish armada ship, sir john Hawkins introduced it, Sir Francis drake brought back a load of potatoes in 1586, then Sir Walter Raleigh brought it in Ireland, and it reached the royal family in England in 1619. They even mention king louis xv1 wore a potato buttonhole. ‘It became highly fashionable’. The potato travelled to England, Scotland, Ireland, France and Germany. There were some disastrous blows that involved and effected the reputation of the spun but it still continued on its way to The United States and Australia.
‘Potatoes became popular and eaten as a vegetable everyday around the world’. It gives a bunch of nutritional facts containing vitamin b1, b2, b3, vitamin c and ‘it has more potassium than a banana’. Included in the history were some old etchings/drawings of farmers and women working in the fields. Then it ends the book on how to grow your own potatoes. Now growing up my parents grew potatoes, and I remember as a kid going out with a shovel and digging up potatoes for supper. later as an adult I was digging up potatoes in my own garden. potatoes are an amazing staple, and we do take them for granted. In this book it shows what can be done with a potato. The book starts with the perfect potato, then it goes to tasty beginnings, sensational salads, the main courses and then classic accompaniment.
Funny how a story can lead to another story. And how fun it is to open up a book even a cookbook. I think I will just leave this book here and leave the page open to the Cornish pasties. I could put rutabagas on the shopping list.
almostfinnish
The Popular Potato best recipes, by Valwyn McMonigal, 1989
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