Despite today’s trend of linking the potato to junk food (think French Fries or chips!) the first vegetable that I am planting early spring in my garden are potatoes! In fact, potatoes are not only a beloved comfort food, they are also considered to be healthy and help with weight loss.
Originally from South America, potatoes are the world’s fourth-largest food crop after corn, wheat and rice, and are grown and eaten all over the world. What we consume are the starchy tubers that the potato plant grows underground. As a child, I watched my grand parents growing them in large crops that would be then divided between family members and kept in root cellars to ensure our winter subsistence. In fact, before modern day globalization, many countries relied heavily on potato consumption during wintertime, and years of unsuccessful crops could have tragic consequences on their populations. The Great Famine or Irish Potato Famine, caused by potatoes blight infection combined with a mid-19th century political issues that resulted in about 1 million deaths, and an exodus of more than 2 million people from Ireland.
