Post 33/2024. Goshen, Indiana. The barbeques we’ve enjoyed this summer have been nothing short of smashing. Something grilled, something in a dish, something among the many desserts. We’ve relished lovely up-tempo fiestas with friends and family away and with company at home.

These gatherings offer food for body, mind and spirit. Soul food. One such recent event included homemade ice-cream, pontoon rides and a lit firepit, and the laughter and rambunctiousness of youngsters. Children, grandchildren, work, travel, school, health are topics that top the conversation list. Food-wise, burgers, sausage-on-a bun and wieners come hot off the grill; salads call forth oohs and awes, including potato salad. Desserts offer wonderfully rich choices. It’s so tempting to throw caution to the winds, but. . . .

This week my doctor advised me to watch carbs and calories. Watch, don’t eliminate them, he said. Just cut back and in six months we’ll see the improved numbers. That’s not new counsel, just more insistent. So I’ll work to be mindful, including paying attention to those sweet whispers from Marty in my ear.

Fiber/Fibre and a fine, fine day

The Fiber One Cereal box on the left notes 65% fiber and the one on the right notes “96% of your daily value of fibre per serving.” The right one appears in French, the box we bought in Canada. I have yet to puzzle out the differing calculations. In any case, this is one cereal that I can eat in moderation.

The food in the picture on the right was served at a family gathering at the home of Jan and John who live on Perrin Lake, Michigan. I hope they managed to “put away” the leftovers. It was a fine, fine day.

Exercise like a preschooler

One thing we could do at extended family gatherings is the preschoolers’ game that goes by the lyrics, “One potato, two potato, three potato, four. / Five potato, six potato, seven potato more. / One potato, two potato, three potato, four. / I like mashed potato, can I have some? / Pleeeease!” Why not play this game as adults, if for nothing else than to demonstrate what a radio sports announcer used to say during my years growing up, “If you can’t play a sport, then be one.” (The game offers plenty of exercise-friendly hoots n’ hollers to boot).

What’s up with the potato?

The headline in a feature in The Telegraph (17 August 2024) states: “Britain is heading towards potato armageddon–unless science can save us.” The headline hypes the topic too much for my taste, but it did get me to read the article. (I came across it in SmartNews, an app I check out regularly that aggregates news from sources around the world).

At least armageddon is spelled in lower case.

It’s an excellent article, written by Richard Godwin. He reports on his visit to a potato research lab called B-hive Innovations Ltd, an agri-tech R&D company based in Lincoln, England.

Nothing chills out the soul like the comfort of tea and potato. -Aisling Bea

The teams work, Godwin writes, “is of national importance. In March, the Government backed UK Research and Innovation fund invested part of its 13.5 million budget into this project, known as ‘TuberGene’. The money will enable scientists to apply cutting-edge precision breeding approaches to potatoes, to reduce bruising and make potatoes quicker to cook, to reduce waste and, ultimately to transform them.”

I learned that the Maris Piper is the UKs most popular potato. making up 14 percent of all potato crops. But how do you breed old potato varieties and develop new ones to meet the changing climate conditions, production and storage costs, short-sighted legislation (as preventing the highly desired seed potatoes grown in Scotland to European Union growers), global instability, and noted repeatedly the acute challenge of weather to which the potato is particularly vulnerable.

My idea of heaven is a great big baked potato and someone to share it with. -Unknown

The lab is working at gene-editing (not to be confused with genetic modification as exists only in the US). The future for potatoes lies in good hands, as the article reveals. Godwin says, “Spend some time with potato people and two things become apparent. The first is a deep, near-mystical love of potatoes. . . . “the second trait of potato people–their concern that without technological innovation, the British potato will die out.”

That’s a frightening thought, mollified by the dedication of scientists, such as at B-Hive Innovations, who are working on new varieties as well as improving old ones. In the 1970s the UK was “100-percent self-sufficient in production,” Godwin quotes Ian Toth, director of the National Potato Innovation Centre in Dundee. “we can’t wait 30 years. We have to do it now.” The article notes that in 2020 there were 2,500 farmers who were growing potatoes. Only about half of that number still do.

Proper love should be utterly supportive and comfortable; and it feels like a raincoat or a jacket [baked] potato. -Olivia Colman

Godwin: What makes all this feel a little poignant is that British people really love potatoes–indeed, loving potatoes might just be the one thing that unites us as a people. In an interview published in Arete magazine in 2007, Britain’s much-loved novelist Ian McEwan identified the term ‘peoria’ as one of his favourite words. Definition: the fear of not peeling enough potatoes.”

Innovation is well established and thriving in the UK. I raise my hands and plate to all those working on making potatoes an improved bumper crop.

Selected pix from the week

Top row: 1. From the Greencroft wild flower garden. 2. Peach crisp Marty baked for company of Jan and John, Jenny and Rory and pooch Iris. 3. Though Iris’s home is in Andover, Massachusetts, through multiple visits to our home she was immediately at home. A real pal. 4. Ducks on a log at the Goshen Dam, sighted as part of our walk to and along the Millrace on a too hot day this week. Stopped for a backpack full of groceries as we neared home. Actually, we had coffees and breakfast sandwiches at Starbucks in the cool of the grocery store. Good week.

“Salad please, the potato dish. Thank you. Ah, Iris, here’s a jerky treat for you.”

-John