National Potato Day is August 19, so if you like spuds, this one’s for you!
Never celebrated this tasty tot before? Good news, we have the lowdown on how to do things up right with facts and links to turn you from couch potato to party animal.
Potatoes have been a popular food for centuries so it’s about time we recognize this versatile and ap-peeling favorite. Mashed, smashed, chipped, or covered in cheese, potatoes can be eaten with just about every meal — or as a meal! — making these starchy veggies a delicious and easy way to get iron, potassium and vitamin c. The puns are just baked right in! Now just fry and stop us from telling you the whole scoop on what makes National Potato Day so …spudtacular.
https://nationaltoday.com/national-potato-day/
Just a quick update so you guys no I’m not dead....have not posted I’m quite some time.
Moved into our newly built home 4 nights ago.
Dog and wife are in heaven and ai am still in “unpacking limbo.”
Garden is still churning out loads of peppers and apparently my soil is perfect for watermelons because I swear to the lord, baby, teenaged, and even adult Jesus, both varieties of watermelons iny garden are sweeter than cotton candy.
My cantaloupe plants are producing fruit but none are ripe yet.
Tomatoes very slow right now.....it’s Ben over a 100 degrees for about 2 months straight so the pollen is getting whacked pretty hard and sterilized by the temps.
Sin e I have about 150-200 plants I am still getting adequate production however for our small household.
The best flavor Tom’s so far have been the Abe Lincolns and Brandywine..
Along with my unknown heirloom I got out if a tomato at the farmers market in Chelan WA back in 2018....still getting seeds from that strain.
Eggplants are coming along well.
Scattered cowpeas in one bed for clay soil conditioning....ants grew well but no peas (will have to research h why they never flowered) so I weed whacked them in place to get some organic material into that bed.
I forgot to add, fall crop seed starts are getting dropped into the ground Starting tomorrow and my wife loves her new, huge, soaking tub.
I did my part! I grew German Butterball potatoes this season - a few more weeks and they can be dug. Foliage is starting to die back, now. I usually grow some Red Norland, too - a favorite red potato. :)
German Butterball Potato Characteristics:
“German Butterball potatoes are a gourmet potato variety with a brown peel and yellow flesh. These specialty potatoes have a buttery melt-in-your-mouth flavor and flakey texture. German Butterball potatoes are most commonly used as baking potatoes but can also be fried or roasted. This is a late-season variety that generally takes 110-135 days to grow to mature size in the garden.”
https://www.homefortheharvest.com/german-butterball-potatoes/
Dilly potatoes- oil, butter, dill, salt and pepper (and if you want a little heat, a pinch of cayenne) - drizzle the mixture over boiled potatoes- preferably small potatoes the size of ping pong balls or smaller. Always a favorite at dinner table.
In Central IL: Dehydrate,,,,
We will be digging our spuds this coming week. There are a lot for just two people. We plant Kennebec potatoes. Long term survivers last us into January. Still we have far more, and when they begin to eye out in Jan. We look them over closely. Those who look like they will hold over until planting early we save. Those who appear to need using right away we Dry.
If you have never dried potatoes there are three things you must do.
1. Clean them well and slice them thin..perhaps 1/4 inch thick.
2. Bring a pan of water to a boil. Place the potatoes in the water [let it come to a boil after adding spuds] Boil for two minutes.
3. For best results place on a fan forced food dehydrator until they get hard. Place in the best air reduced system you have. We use gallon glass pickle jars. The air doesn’t seem to be a problem.
If you do this your potatoes will dry well. Keep for a very long time, and taste awesome with the potato texture equal to original.
We use them for almost anything. You can soak these, and then boil the slices for a short while, drain and mash.
They are awesome for cheese dishes etc.
Folks, this is a hack for potato storage. To many potatoes? Never. Keep them as long as you like.
We use an Excalibur dehydrator as well as an AH and a couple of other dehydrators. But you don’t need an expensive dehydrator. Even non fan forced will work but require longer drying times.
Dehydrate what you cannot use. Do not throw them out. Add nothing to them. Just blanch and dry. And no they will not turn dark if done properly
Good Morning...I am at ER awaiting doc because something in my garden bit me last nite...miserable nite...swelling not going down and very painful, plus flu like symptoms. ...lesson learned...wear long sleeve shirts in the garden!!
Meanwhile, we are waiting to get blasted with up to 10" of rain over the next two days here in So Cal. We can always use the water but I assume a lot of this will run off b/c it is so fast and furious. Still, will be nice to dampen the heat we've had and give the trees a good soaking.
My plumeria are blooming very nicely this year.
And my black mission fig tree is about to explode all at once:
My helpers waiting for their next assignment
78°, 34% humidity, sunshine with a breeze .... heavenly! It feels like an early Fall day, my favorite time of year. This won’t last beyond tomorrow.
Not potatoes exactly, but a few weeks ago, my Sis noticed that her grocery-store sweet potatoes all started sprouting “eyes”, like regular potatoes do. These aren’t any fancy organic brand, either. Never saw anything like it before.
She now tells me that the sprouted sweet potatoes, which she had cut in half and put in Mason jars of water, are growing ROOTS like there’s no tomorrow. She’s itching to put ‘em in the ground, but I suggested large pots might be better, so as to be able to move them into her garage if it gets cold early this year.
Sis has not just a green thumb, but entire green hands. Wish I’d inherited whatever gift she has . . . growing anything is a total crap-shoot for me. Heh.
INSTRUCTIONS
Cut potatoes into quarters. Don't peel them.
In a large bowl, drizzle generously with oil (olive, canola).
Add salt, pepper and your favorite seasoning,* to taste
(*Garlic salt, chicken bouillion powder, French onion soup mix, Italian herb mix,
pulverized bacon bits, Ranch dressing mix – whatever you like).
Toss to coat all surfaces evenly.
Pour into air fryer basket; set at 400 degrees – no need to preheat.
Set air fryer for 20 minutes. Set oven timer for 10 minutes.
At 10 minutes, toss potatoes well.
At 20 minutes, check if well browned all the way around.
If not, toss again and cook another 5 minutes until all browned.
Potatoes, one of my favorite vegetables. I love the blue /purple ones. They have the same potato taste and texture and are great for diabetics!
That tomato in the middle is off one of the same Chadwick Cherry plants as those globe shaped tomatoes that surround it. All the others on the same cluster are globe shaped but as you can see by the two to the right, they have the same mottling effect as far as how they're ripening.
Did a couple of different plants cross yet it only affected this one tomato for shape and one cluster for ripening color pattern?
If a tomato ripens indoors, are the seeds just as viable as if it ripened on the vine?
I would imagine so. I'm thinking about saving seeds to see what happens next year. When I save seeds from this one or these three, I'll try a bite to see how it compares to the rest.
These are the same plants that shoot out a sucker from the main stem with no branch armpit involved or the main stem splits into 4-5 unidentifiable shoots. Not sure what's going on here and/or at Baker Creek where the seeds came from but it's interesting if nothing else.
The odd weather continues here in Central Missouri. Last week was cool and damp then it snapped off hot and humid on Saturday. Yesterday we saw 102°F with 85% humidity. It was unpleasant outside to say the least.
I spent some quality time with the weed whacker (used a full spool of trimmer line) on Saturday. Yesterday I mowed the house yard, the chestnut grove, and Mrs. Augie’s cart paths, then gave the Kubota a badly needed wash job.
I’ve been pondering what I want to plant in my fall garden, then it hit me that I’m going to be away from home for nearly three weeks in September. My benevolent corporate overlords have bestowed upon me a 2nd long-term service award so I’ve got four extra weeks of paid vacation this year. We’ll spend our usual four nights at Lucas Oil Speedway, home for a week, then off to sunny Florida for two weeks. We’ve booked five nights beachfront on Pensacola Beach, then we’re going to wander our way around Big Bend and spend a couple or three nights in Crystal River to do some kayaking. From there we’ll bop over to St. Augustine for four or five days and spend some time visiting #2 Son, his BFF, and two of the grandkids before making our way back to Misery. So... long story short, rather than plant a bunch of stuff I won’t be able to take care of I’m going to start tearing down and cleaning up so I can dig the garden back down to its natural elevation and rebuild it with some nice raised beds.
In the meantime we’ll have BLTs until the last of my poor diseased tomato plants fold up. I’ve been picking pole beans three times a week and giving most of them away. I’ve been pulling a few beets every week - eating a few and giving away a few more. The sweet bell peppers and the carrots are both continuing to amaze me. The birdhouse gourds also did really well this time. I’ve got a couple dozen of them curing in the greenhouse and they are whoppers.
With generally cool weather and lots of rain during August the pasture grasses and late-season legumes have put on quite a bit of new growth. We’re short on round bales due to the dry spring weather so it hit me that I should ask good neighbor Dave if he was interested in getting the square baler out soon and turn my grass into a stack of idiot cubes. Turns out he was planning to do some square baling so there will be goat/sheep hay for the 4H kids over the winter and into spring. I had to feed two of the big round bales earlier in the summer before the rains came so having some high-quality square bales in the barn will be one less thing to worry about going into winter.
