Philippa Murray Philippa Murray

The Story Behind...
The Spurned Spud
Joseph Graham - Main Street, joseph@ballyhoo.ca
June Angus and I have put our heads together
to figure out how to get people to grow more
potatoes. We checked out what Chris Voight,
executive director of the Washington State Potato
Commission, had done, but then decided to develop our own strategy.
Voight was pretty peeved about the bad press potatoes were getting - french fries,
potato chips, grease - there was even talk about how potatoes were responsible
for childhood obesity. Then there were the diets - Atkins, South Beach, low-carb
warnings, glycemic index concerns… it was like there was a concerted effort
to discourage people from eating potatoes. Chris had a tough
job. He was stressed, overweight and, according to his wife,
wasn’t sleeping properly.
The lowly potato has had a rough time of it. Developed
by a civilization of horticulturalists in South America,
it found its way to Europe in 1536 with the Spanish
but it hit its first roadblock there. It’s a Nightshade, as
is Atropa Belladonna, the poison of choice going back
to before Roman times and a plant associated with
witchcraft. France, then the largest, wealthiest country in
Europe, simply banned the dangerous-looking spud and its
popularity did not improve until the last half of the 1700s
when the king of Prussia supplied his farmers with seed
potatoes and told them if they didn’t grow them, they would
lose an ear. The only ones to fully embrace the spud were the
Irish, who naturally trusted Sir John Hawkins, one of the most notorious pirates
of his day. He brought them a few potatoes in 1565 and Sir Francis Drake brought
more. Drake gave some to the Queen of England, but her kitchen staff were not as
worldly as the Irish and served the queen a lovely platter of the stems and leaves.
The Irish cloned their original few potatoes for almost three centuries until the
genetic material just gave out.
Chris Voight knew what the Irish had learned. The potato is very close to being a
complete food. An average potato will give you half of your recommended daily
intake of vitamin C and a quarter of your dietary fibre. This got Chris thinking
and he decided to go on a 60-day diet eating nothing but potatoes. During
the oppressive years of British rule, there were many times that the Irish poor
ate only potatoes, 14 pounds a day, with milk or buttermilk. Their population
quadrupled and they were reputed to be larger, healthier and more beautiful than
other Europeans. They didn’t have access to recipes like Potage Parmentier, either.
Antoine-Augustin Parmentier served as an apprentice pharmacist for the French
army during the Seven Years’ War. Captured five times by the Prussians, he spent
long periods in prison eating only potatoes and rather liking them. There were a
lot of potatoes available thanks to the Prussians’ attachment to their ears. Back
in France after the war, Parmentier decided to do something about the fact that
the French king had outlawed growing potatoes altogether. He began a famous
series of dinners working out the recipes for a number of potato dishes including
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a soup now known as Potage Parmentier. He invited the likes of Benjamin
Franklin, then residing in Paris to seek support for the Americans in their war
of independence, as well as the famous French chemist Antoine Lavoisier. A
couple of generations later, an admirer of Parmentier, A.N. Morin, founded
the experimental potato farm that became Sainte Adèle and encouraged
Quebecers eating potatoes.
The potato is descended from one - only one - of the hundreds of wild potatolike
plants that grow in Peru and Chile. Long before the Bible was written
- before Adam and Eve - a woman and her sisters and neighbours living in the
pre-Inca Andes mountains of South America selected one of these wild potatoes
and began to breed and cross-breed it until, over generations, they developed
numerous varieties of a tuber with the characteristics we recognize today as a
potato. This happened about seven thousand years ago according to experts from
the University of Wisconsin, who have traced back the DNA to one original wild
potato, cultivated into all known varieties of the spud. We all know that Europe
invaded the Americas and almost ninety percent of the people were killed or
died because they were allergic to Europeans. So the Europeans gallivanted all
over the two continents figuring that it was in God’s plan
that they should own this great wealth, and forcing
the survivors to pay homage to this awful god that
had killed their families, their cities and a lot of their
culture. Less well known is that those great American
horticultural civilizations managed to spread their
foods around the world and humanity pays homage to
their genius with every meal.
Of all the European countries, the French were the most
resistant to the potato, but Parmentier was determined to
change French habits because the French were starving, a
crisis that would contribute to the French Revolution. In 1786 he
developed a strategy to distribute potatoes through his extensive new
gardens at Gentilly. Understanding his countrymen’s mentality, he asked the
king to supply him with a military guard to protect his valuable potatoes but then
told the guards to accept bribes if anyone wanted to steal spuds during the night.
Within a year, potatoes were spreading rapidly across France.
Chris Voight’s strategy was to survive a two-month diet of nothing but potatoes.
Not only did he survive, he lost excess body weight, brought his problematic
cholesterol and blood pressure down, balanced his blood glucose and, according
to his wife, even stopped snoring.
We can’t promise you that you will stop snoring, but June has undertaken to
show you how to grow spuds in her column Garden Talk on page 39.
References available upon request.
Yesterday was one of those days. I didn’t feel good
and there was no way I was going to write my
monthly column for Main Street as the creative
juices simply weren’t flowing. I also had a music lesson that I didn’t feel up to
either, but knew I couldn’t cancel last minute. So, I went, and I explained my
situation to Kalyan, who is a wonderful, award-winning musician and a most
amazing teacher.
“So what do you do when you feel like this?” I asked. “I listen to my instrument,”
he responded, and suggested I do the same. I followed his instructions, which
were to put my hands on my instrument and let the music happen.
The genre of music I’m learning is my own. There is no score and no “how
to;” the music just emerges as I play and sing. Sometimes it’s improvised and
sometimes it settles into a melody.
Here I was, one hand on the keyboard, the other on the bellows of my Indian
harmonium, feeling awkward and vulnerable, on top of not feeling well. What
could come of this? I was prepared to try, because I had come to trust my
teacher’s experience and insight. And then tones happened and soft music arose
that was a perfect expression of myself at that moment. I was stunned by its
beauty and astounded that an unbearable state could turn into something so
beautiful, and almost sacred. It was like a white lotus flower growing out of the
grimiest mud.
The lesson turned out to be quite
the experience, as more new and
striking music happened. As I
reflected later, it occurred to me
that it’s a perfect metaphor for life.
There are two ways of living; to
live according to some score, or to
not have a script and to respond
to a situation as it presents itself
in that moment. Of course, it’s
relatively easy to do this when we
feel good and confident, but it’s a
lot more challenging when we feel
shaky and wobbly on our feet. It’s
when we dare show up like this
that the real magic happens!
To contact Grace call 450
226-3251, visit www.
heartoftransformation.org or
www.heartoflovehealing.net.
Loving it All
The Magic of
Showing Up
Grace Bubeck - Main Street