No, not THOSE potato chips, mine! Every year I try a few potato plants, mostly because they seem to come up on their own. I had never had much success with them, due to my soil conditions, hot weather, and my lack of knowledge. This year I planted some potatoes in a bed filled mostly with trucked-in soil and protected with hardware cloth on the bottom. They had been growing pretty well, so I hilled the soil up a couple of times. A few days ago, one of the plants wasn’t doing too well, so I decided to dig out anything that might be there before it rotted away. I was surprised to find 5 large, very high quality potatoes and one smaller one.
I had had instructions to bring home a leek or two, to cook a favorite chicken dish for my husband. When I arrived home and proudly displayed the potatoes, he said,
“Oh, potato leek soup!”
Now, that wasn’t what I had in mind at all. While doing other gardening chores, all I could think of was samosa filling. I didn’t have all the spices, or the pastry covering, but with a few substitutions, the re-engineered samosas could hopefully feed my Indian food craving. While I have eaten potatoes at my exception meals and out of town, the last time I cooked and ate a real potato was on Thanksgiving. Someone brought some Jerusalem artichokes to a locavore potluck, and they were wonderful, and surely something I will grow from now on, but there’s nothing like the real thing.
After much discussion about potato allocation, I realized I was too tired to make either dish, so I just whipped up a quick stir-fry and saved MY potatoes for later.
Last night we had potato leek soup. I still have four more opportunities, plus a bit for a pot of vegetable soup. Will one of the dishes be home-made potato chips? If so, they will have to be fried in home-churned butter or in what’s left of my gallon of local olive oil.
