It is a day of POTATOES!

I had two bags — one red, one white — and they were not quite elderly.  Yet.  So I took the white potatoes, quartered them up, salted, peppered and oiled them, and tossed them in the oven to bake at 375 degrees for an hour.  The red potatoes I half-heartedly tried to dice, then tossed them in the leftover olive oil;  I dumped the whole thing in a crockpot, added sweet paprika, lemon pepper, herbs de provence, butter, and will be cooking it on high for at least two and a half hours.  They won’t crisp up that way, I think — but my wife can probably hash brown ’em tomorrow and that’s all that I care about.

Potatoes!

Tweet of the Day, An Epic Potato Rant edition.

I have no idea how true any of it is, but the basic message (“monoculture agronomy can be a bad idea”) is sound.

Moe Lane

PS: Actually, my ancestors came over decades after the Irish potato famine. I’d tell you why, except that I never really got told those stories. Or too much about why they all jumped at the chance to enter America with their last names usefully changed…

Moe Lane’s dead-simple Crispy Roasted Potato recipe.

You probably don’t need to know how to do it, but some poor kid who is 23 and needs to eat something, anything, that isn’t takeout and isn’t ramen? Well, that poor kid has an Internet connection, and, shoot, I wouldn’t have minded knowing this at 23.  So: Continue reading Moe Lane’s dead-simple Crispy Roasted Potato recipe.

Annnnnd the Northeastern potato/tomato crop is at risk.

(Via Instapundit) Apparently, it’s going to be that kind of year:

Late blight, which caused the Irish Potato Famine of the 1840s and 1850s, is killing potato and tomato plants in home gardens from Maine to Ohio and threatening commercial and organic farms, U.S. plant scientists said on Friday.

“Late blight has never occurred this early and this widespread in the United States,” said Meg McGrath, a plant pathologist at Cornell University’s extension center in Riverhead, New York.

[snip]

The disease, known officially as Phytophthora infestans, causes large mold-ringed olive-green or brown spots on plant leaves, blackened stems, and can quickly wipe out weeks of tender care in a home garden.

McGrath said in her 21 years of research, she has only seen five outbreaks in the United States. The destructive disease can spread rapidly in cooler, moist weather, infecting an entire field within days.

Fortunately, unlike the 19th Century Irish we’re not even remotely reliant on one staple for our food source; doubly fortunately, the Great Hops Crisis of 2008 has passed. Still, the last thing that we need right now is higher food prices in anything.  Particularly french fries and pizza.

Yeah, I thought that I would make sure that the problem was made clear to everybody.

Moe Lane