Potatoes

Reading a news article posted by the BBC news on 4th October 2005, claiming they could just now confirm that the original potato was dometicated from a potato in Peru, made me laugh. Certainly within a short time (a few hours at most!) in Peru I´d learnt that this was not a theory to dispute, it simply has always been fact.

Peru is definitely is the center of the potato world! I think they now have something like over 4000 different species. Today there are whole organisations devoted to keeping the strains seperate. Each type of potato has a specific use, some only for soups, some only for frying, some only for frying for the toppings on soups, some just for baking, some just for baking with chicken, some just for baking with red meat, some that get freeze dried during winter and others that are really purple or really yellow and are for decoration!!

Unfortunately I´m not a huge fan of potatoes myself, but it is still interesting to see, with huge sections of markets taken over just for potatoes!