Potato Trivia, Poetry and Art
Trivia
Today potatoes are grown in all 50 states of the USA and in about 125 countries throughout the world.
The potato is about 80% water and 20% solids.
The world's largest potato chip (on exhibit at the Potato Expo ) was produced by the Pringle's Company in Jackson, TN in 1990. It measures 23" x 14.5".
An 8-ounce baked or boiled potato has only about 100 calories.
The average American eats about 124 pounds of potatoes per year while Germans eat about twice as much.
In 1974, an Englishman named Eric Jenkins grew 370 pounds of potatoes from one plant.
Thomas Jefferson gets the credit for introducing "french fries" to America when he served them at a White House dinner.
The potato belongs to the family Solanaceae; all the plants in this family share certain characteristics, like having similar leaves and flowers. Other members of the family are the tomato, the chili pepper, the eggplant, and poisonous nightshade, belladonna, the petunia, and the tobacco plant. Some parts of these plants are very poisonous.
Tomatoes, Batatas, Potatoes, Patatas. . . The sweet potato belongs in the same family as the morning glory ( Ipomoea batatas ) and is not a relative of the potato. The Spanish who brought sweet potatoes back from the West Indies called them by their native name batatas . When white potatoes ( papas ) were introduced into Spain some years later, some people thought they were related. Soon papas were renamed patatas . But both were translated into the English as potato ! Let's call the whole thing off!
Laying a potato peel at the door of a girl on May Day showed her that you disliked her.
In 1664, a book came out dedicated to King Charles II, patron of the new Royal Society, on the subject of potatoes.
Here's cucumbers spinnage and French beans Come buy my nice sallery Here's parsnips and fine leeks Come buy my potatoes too.
-- c. 1700, an old English ballad
Potatoes, three pounds a penny, Potatoes Augh fait, here's a kind-hearted lass of green Erin Unruffled in mind, and for trifles not caring Who, trundling her barrow, content in her state is Still crying, three pounds for a penny, Potatoes.
-- from a collection of London Cries c.1800
In the early 1600s, potatoes sold for very high prices both on the Continent and in England. One pound sold for the equivalent of about fifteen times what they sell for today. A newly organized uppercrust English scientific group, the Royal Society, determined to study the potato, to see if it could be planted easily and be food for the poor. Other scientific sorts, eager to be recognized, began planting and studying the potato on their own. In 1664, a book was published dedicated to King Charles II, patron of the Royal Society. It's title was
"England's Happiness Increased, Or a sure and Easy Remedy Against all Succeeding Dear Years by a Plantation of the Roots called Potatoes: Whereby (with the Addition of Wheatflower) Excellent Good and Wholesome Bread may be Made Every 8 or 9 Months Together, for Half the Charge as Formerly; Also by the Planting of These Roots Ten Thousand Men in England and Wales Who Know Not How to Live, or What to Do to Get a Maintenance for their Families, may on one Acre of Ground make 30 Pounds per Annum. Invented and Published for the Good of the Poorer Sort"
by John Forster, Gentleman. At this time, potatoes were already being grown and eaten all over Ireland.
"To God and Francis Drake, who brought to Europe for the everlasting benefit of the poor -- the Potato." -- on a monument near a partly-ruined castle above the little town of Hirschhorn in the Neckar Valley of Germany
The potato "peel" changes its chemical structure after it is harvested. The outer layers thicken and harden and their cells are converted to the same substance that is found in bottle cork!
Less than 1 acre of potatoes can produce enough potato gasahol to fill up 25 cars
Mr. Potato Head was the first toy to be advertised on American television.
Did you know that potatoes were a natural stain remover? When you get a stain on your clothing, let it dry. Then rub a fresh potato over the stain for a couple of minutes. Wash your clothes with laundry detergent and water as you usually do. The enzymes in the potato will probably have removed most, if not all, of the stain!
Guess what was used for snowflakes in the movie Close Encounters of the Third Kind? Dried potato flakes. Instant mashed-potato flakes are used for fallen snow.
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If a woman is expecting a baby, she should not eat potatoes because the baby will be born with a big head!
A potato in your pocket will cure rheumatism and eczema!
Potatoes should be put on sore muscles and oozing sores to draw out the pain.If you have a wart, rub it with a cut potato, then bury the potato in the ground. As the potato rots in the ground, your wart will disappear.
Carrying a peeled potato in a pocket on the same side as a bad tooth would cure the tooth as soon as the potato fell apart.
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The Irish referred to potatoes as "spuds," the name that came from a type of spade used for digging potatoes.
The word " pothole " which we use to describe a hole in the road came from the Irish. They boiled their daily meal of potatoes in a pot. When the potatoes were finished cooking, the pot was lifted off the fire and set on the ground to cool. In the process of mashing the potatoes, the pot would be pushed into the ground. In time, a deep hole would develop, a pothole !
A couch potato -- someone who is glued to the TV and never exercises
He's a cold potato. -- someone who is not warm-spirited
Small potatoes -- not much
Hot potato -- a problem nobody wants to deal with
" Little pigs eat great potatoes. " An Irish saying
" Three small tatties in a pot. Take one out and see if it's hot. If it's hot, cut its throat. Two small tatties in a pot. " A choosing rhyme from Scotland
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" Mashed Potato Time " - a best selling 1962 record for Dee Dee Sharp
" Potato Head Blues " - by jazz artist Louis Armstrong
" Ketchup Loves Potatoes " and " Bud the Spud "
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Poetry and Prose
An Irish poet named Bryant wrote this poem:
They make the boys stout, and they keep the girls slender,
They soften the heart and they strengthen the mind;
And the man from the bog, or the lord in high splendor,
All live by potatoes, as all folks can find.
" What I say is that, if a fellow really likes potatoes, he must be a pretty decent sort of fellow. " A.A. Milne
" Mashed potatoes are to give everybody enough " -- from A Hole is to Dig by Ruth Krauss
William Shakespeare had one of his characters proclaim, in The Merry Wives of Windsor ,
"Let the sky rain potatoes!"
Some people of Shakespeare's time thought that potatoes were an aphrodisiac!
In the late 16 th Century, potatoes were still a rare and expensive delicacy. In a play of the period, a young man shows off by ordering the most expensive foods:
"Caviare, sturgeon, anchovies, pickle-oysters; yes, and a potato pie."
This prose was found at www.doo.com --
"Are you unable to say no to french fries? Listen to this recording: Confessions of a Potato Junkie. Spuds, taters, pratie, or pomme de terre - all drugs to the Potato Junkie (PJ). A modern day tragedy leaves the PJ unable to cope with the likes of lettuce, cabbage, or okra instead turning the outcast toward the grubby tuber, a product of the underworld. Three PJs confess that their addiction is so strong that they lack the inner strength to just say, "No," even when inept fast-food cooks serve undercooked "fries". This bold audio tape withholds no punches in a graphic, yet honest discussion of the horrors of au-gratin, hashbrowns, deep fried, baked, boiled, or sautéed. Should not accompany a quarter pounder. " (Copyright 1997 Ed Dechant)
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Potatoes and Art
Gogh, Vincent van
Gogh, Vincent (Willem) van (b. March 30, 1853, Zundert, Neth.--d. July 29, 1890, Auvers-sur-Oise, near Paris). Generally considered the greatest Dutch painter after Rembrandt, van Gogh powerfully influenced the Expressionist movement in modern art. His work, all produced during a 10 year period, hauntingly conveys through its striking colour, coarse brushwork, and contoured forms, the anguish of a mental illness that eventually resulted in suicide. Among his masterpieces are numerous self-portraits and the well-known The Starry Night (1889).
[ Encyclopaedia Britannica , 1994]
Van Gogh's uncle was a partner in the international firm of picture dealers Goupil and Co. and, in 1869, van Gogh went to work in the branch at The Hague. Sent to the London branch in 1873, he fell unsuccessfully in love with the daughter of his landlady. His unrequited passion affected him so badly that he was dismissed from his job and he returned to the Continent. This was the first of several disastrous attempts to find happiness with a woman.
In 1876, he returned to England as an unpaid assistant at a school, and his experience of urban squalor awakened a religious zeal and a longing to serve his fellow men. Following in his father's footsteps (a Protestant pastor), van Gogh began to train for the ministry, but he abandoned his studies in 1878. He went to work as a lay preacher among the impoverished miners of the grim Borinage district in Belgium. In his zeal he gave away his own worldly goods to the poor and was dismissed for his literal interpretation of Christ's teaching. He remained in the Borinage, suffering both acute poverty and a spiritual crisis.
Then, in 1880, he found that art was his vocation and the means by which he could bring consolation to humanity. From this time he worked at his new `mission' with single-minded frenzy. Although he often suffered from extreme poverty and undernourishment, his output in the ten remaining years of his life was prodigious: about 800 paintings and a similar number of drawings.
The Potato Eaters
1885 (180 Kb); Oil on canvas, 81.5 x 114.5 cm; Rijksmuseum Vincent van Gogh, Amsterdam
From 1881 to 1885 van Gogh lived in the Netherlands, sometimes in lodgings, supported by his devoted brother Theo, who regularly sent him money from his own small salary. He painted peasants and workers, the most famous picture from this period being The Potato Eaters (Van Gogh Museum, Amsterdam; 1885). Of this painting he wrote to Theo:
`I have tried to emphasize that those people, eating their potatoes in the lamp-light have dug the earth with those very hands they put in the dish, and so it speaks of manual labour, and how they have honestly earned their food'.
In 1885 van Gogh moved to Antwerp on the advice of Antoine Mauve (a cousin by marriage), and studied for some months at the Academy there. Academic instruction had little to offer such an individualist, however, and in February 1886 he moved to Paris, where he met Pissarro, Degas, Gauguin, Seurat, and Toulouse-Lautrec. At this time his painting underwent a violent metamorphosis under the combined influence of Impressionism and Japanese woodcuts, losing its moralistic flavour of social realism. Van Gogh became obsessed by the symbolic and expressive values of colors and began to use them for this purpose rather than, as did the Impressionists, for the reproduction of visual appearances, atmosphere, and light. `Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I have before my eyes,' he wrote, `I use color more arbitrarily so as to express myself more forcibly'.
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Why did the potato cross the road? He saw a fork up ahead.
How do you describe an angry potato? Boiling Mad.
Why didn't the mother potato want her daughter to marry the famous newscaster? Because he was a commontater.
Why wouldn't the reporter leave the mashed potatoes alone? He desperately wanted a scoop .
What do you say to an angry 300-pound baked potato? Anything, just butter him up.
What does a British potato say when it thinks something is wonderful? It's mashing!
What do you call a baby potato? A small fry!
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