GOT SMALL POTATOES?

I moved into the great “new” house ( what do you call a new home that is very old –70 years old – but is “new to you”?) last August.

We had found a bag of uneaten potatoes from last fall before the move…they were a wonderful mix of colorful heirloom varieties – mislaid from Brookside Farm 2008 Organic CSA basket in a dark corner of the garage… Now – almost a year later – .they had huge 8” long sprouts on almost all of them.

The idea came to put them in our garden beds…a bit of a challenge as these beds had not been worked for a few years and had compacted soil (and not much of it) …but, what to lose? We stuck them in the soil, covered them with straw and watered a few times a week. Ten weeks later, the tops had been blasted by frost and so we dug them up…what a nice surprise! A bucket of smallest potatoes I had ever seen were our first harvest in this potentially wonderful garden. Some of them were the size of my small fingernail…no matter, I tenderly washed them all and made this simple dish ( see photo) from them…

Recipe: Wash potaoes & steam to almost done, cool. Toss with olive oil, herbs, garlic and salt. Bake or broil until slightly crispy on top. Eat. Yum!

Anyone can grow these hardy crop, a famine food for many peoples, and certainly a calorie booster to any one’s veggie garden mix. I suggest we all learn to grow potatoes – very soon!!!

Localize your food supply, you can’t start soon enough.