Thinking about the wonderful potato.

[Graybeard]

A recent thread about favorite comfort foods got me thinking about how many ways I enjoy eating the lowly potato.

Mashed potatoes and gravy - alongside your Sunday roast beef or Thanksgiving turkey, so warm and comforting.

Fast food fries - crunchy and salty outside and soft and fluffy inside. Perfect companion to your cheeseburger or fried chicken.

Summer potato salad - with mayo, cold and tangy with chopped scallions or warm and vinegary German style. So great for picnics or patio.

Potato chips - Crisp and salty treat, plain or flavored BBQ or sour cream, or rippled style for dips.

Potatoes au gratin - thin sliced, hot creamy and cheesy.

Baked potato - steamy, soft with butter or sour cream or crumbled bacon bits. Can be made lo-cal with just a few spoons of broth as the topping.

Hash browns - Pan fried to crusty, onion-y perfection at breakfast with your eggs and toast.

New Red Potatoes - Boiled and served hot and steamy with skin on. Nothing could be simpler or more tasty.

Also in soups and stews, dumplings and pancakes. Love that tuber!
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[DGeorge]

1. Do you grow them? I do.

[Graybeard]

2. Not in my studio apt. (btw Welcome to DU!)

An apartment in NYC is not the best place for that. But I love seeing the acres and acres of them growing out on Long Island.

[csziggy]

3. And that is just done with one or two common varieties

Potatoes come in thousands of varieties - though many are not grown outside of Peru.

http://www.fao.org/potato-2008/en/potato/varieties.html

[magical thyme]

4. looking forward to violet mashed potatoes this winter

with my home grown peruvian purple potatoes!

Yummmmmm!!!!!

[NNadir]

5. One of the interesting environmental things about the potato is that it has one of the smallest...

...greenhouse gas impacts of any common food grown.

To see this discussed in a cute video, go here:

http://theenergycollective.com/lindsay-wilson/280771/what-low-carbon-food-video

Some years back, on another website where I used to write, I wrote a piece on some issues with the potato:

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/07/01/352793/-Potatoes-Bananas-and-Natural-Habitats

[JustABozoOnThisBus]

6. ... and vodka

can't forget about that wonderful potato product!

Cheers!

[Graybeard]

7. Richard Burton's comment about that.

Burton, an infamous tippler, was telling Liz that you might say he was a vegetarian.

"The juniper berries in my gin. The hops in my brew and the barley in my single-malt Scotch. And then there is that marvelous thing that the Russians do with potatoes. I am a vegetarian."
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[sarge43]

8. Potatoes O'Brien and Baked Potato Soup

Nothing lowly about the potato

[handmade34]

9. ah, another

homemade Potato sourdough bread... so good!!


[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

[antiquie]

10. How do you make it?

[handmade34]

14. long story...

you may be sorry you asked years ago I used to make all my own bread (but hadn't tried sourdough)... I quit eating bread so hadn't made any in a few years... then this summer as my elderberries were ripening my son suggested starting my own wine yeast using only the berries as a starter... I did and was wildly successful (mashed elderberries, watermelon juice and a bit of sugar turned into a wonderful yeasty brew) except my elderberry harvest- set outside for the night- was attacked by some critter so I had no berries to make wine... I then used cider and tried my hand at hard cider using the homemade yeast... success and yummy...

I was so intrigued by my success at developing wild yeast that I did some research and decided to try using the elderberry mixture to make a sourdough starter for bread... I cooked up about two cups of my homegrown potatoes, mashed them up with the potato water, added about 1/4 cup of the elderberry starter and set it in a warm place... this is what I got...

[URL=.html][IMG][/IMG][/URL]

I made bread using only this mixture for yeast and it was delicious!

sponge: 4-5 cups flour, couple tsp salt, couple tbls sugar and 2 cups of the starter... mix and let rise until double... punch down and add enough flour to make a nice dough (my years of experience inform me of right amt) knead and put in pan to rise...bake
sorry no specific recipe but you can find a good recipe in any cookbook

I keep the sourdough starter going by adding a cup or two of mashed potato mixture when needed and then keep it in the refrigerator till next time... I delight in the fact that this is all from just wild yeast and my potatoes... pretty cool!!

[antiquie]

15. Amazing, outstanding!

We have San Francisco sourdough starter but I would love to have my own. We grow sweet potatoes but haven't had luck with the real thing You should find delight in bread from your own wild yeast, I know I would.

[sarge43]

11. Add some cheese and food for the gods. n/t

[MiddleFingerMom]

12. Hot Potato

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[Denninmi]

13. My potato crop was awesome this year.

They got planted really late, the vines were small, each hill had a tin if medium to large tubers.

And, I have almost completely given up eating potatoes and almost all starchy carbs.

Figures, huh?

[libdem4life]

16. potato gnocchi

[LiberalEsto]

17. "O vast earth-apple, waiting to be fried..."

Last edited Mon Sep 30, 2013, 10:36 AM - Edit history (1)

I love this poem by Peter Viereck

To a Sinister Potato

O vast earth-apple, waiting to be fried,
Of all life's starers the most many-eyed,
What furtive purpose hatched you long ago
In Indiana or in Idaho?

In Indiana and in Idaho
Snug underground, the great potatoes grow,
Puffed up with secret paranoias unguessed
By all the duped and starch-fed Middle West.

Like coiled-up springs or like a will-to-power,
The fat and earthy lurkers bide their hour,
The silent watchers of our raucous show
In Indiana or in Idaho.

"They think us dull, a food and not a flower.
Wait! We'll outshine all roses in our hour.
Not wholesomeness by mania swells us so
In Indiana and in Idaho.

"In each Kiwanis Club on every plate,
So bland and health exuding do we wait
That Indiana never, never knows
How much we envy stars and hate the rose."

Some doom will strike (as all potatoes know)
When-once too often mashed in Idaho-
From its cocoon the drabbest of earth's powers
Rises and is a star.
And shines.
And lours."

Peter Viereck

[4_TN_TITANS]

18. We just bought another 50# bag.

Best bang for the grocery buck, we are serious tater eaters, and they are quite healthy, dammit.

[Kaleva]

19. I lived last winter on boiled potato and homemade sauerkraut

Not exclusively but 11 gallons of sauerkraut is alot and that with boiled potato made many a meal for me.