Posted on 06/02/2025 6:00:50 AM PDT by 4Runner
Reds. Russets. Yukon Golds.
Up until about a year or so ago, you could throw together a pretty decent breakfast after frying up a potato, some onions, and parsley for home fries.
And you didn't have to do anything more to the potato than wash it and slice or chop it up.
Not anymore.
The spuds for sale at WalMart or Publix for five and six bucks a bag look like the real thing, but wait until you try to cook them.
The problem is, they won't. Or don't.
You can fry them all you want. Yet they'll stay raw and chewy and tasteless. And stick like glue to the bottom of the pan.
If you try to wait them out on a low heat, they'll burn.
If you par-boil them, they'll end up a glutinous sticky mess.
My cooking skills haven't changed. I still cook potatoes the same way I've always done.
In a seasoned cast-iron skillet. Except now, the results are darned near inedible and aggravating.
Is it plastics contaminating our crops? Is it the water? The soil? Or, is it the Chinese?
Mine were HEB brand.
We’ve been using this SAME brand, style of potatoes, for YEARS. Never had this happen, before.
I have some older ones in the deep freeze....I’ll do a comparison. I just happened to grab one of the newest bags, in a hurry, the other night.
I’ll keep a log, as well.
LOL...that *might* have worked.
We bake Walmart potatoes regularly. No issues, very good.
What caused the problems for your garden?
Are they from the USA? Nowadays, just about all of the tomatoes available at supermarkets—at least in Southern California—are from Mexico, and the same is true for other types of produce. I have been trying to get most of my produce at farmer’s markets.
Seems like it was always raining......
So I'm working on an Ark.
Mostly heat and insufficient water....since we were traveling quite a bit, that summer.
We had an auto drip system in place, but, it wasn’t enough to keep up with the heat.
The weeds did just fine, though.
We have a lot of produce from MX, at our local grocery stores.
Shop online for heat resistant versions, tomatoes for example have ‘Solar Flare’, ‘Heatwave’, and there are others, find out what people are growing in the desert and Phoenix, and of course shade cloth to keep off some of the sun and other tricks.
Heat is a bear for a lot of us and if night time temps stay too high the plants don’t produce well.
Good to know.
I’ve seen videos about people saying their crops and fields have been sprayed with aluminum oxide and therefore won’t grow anything any more, and if it somehow does, the crops all looked deformed. Related?
OreIda is currently unchanged (switched back).
I haven’t been tracking brands of whole Russets, but that will change.
From your description it looks like they’ve lost their apeel.
“The spuds for sale at WalMart or Publix for five and six bucks a bag look like the real thing, but wait until you try to cook them.”
Fauxtatoes, Spud Lites... you really have to keep yer eye out.
This is why I shop at real grocery stores.
The bakers I bought were not in a bag. The green peppers and the potatoes were bought at a local Kroger store.
One thing I do notice is how shiny the produce seems to be. One would think it resembles that wax fruit you used to see as decor.
I have the best looking potato crop EVER.
This probably due to Hurricane Helene wiping out most of my trees.
Now I have as much as 9 hours sun instead of the usual 6 or less.
They look pretty healthy.
We shall see...
>> This is becoming scary. We are spending our money on nice looking garbage.
Two of many reasons to get into gardening.
We do our potatoes in olive oil. Love the taste, and they come out just fine.
The potato salad in the delis I’ve shopped here are almost always under cooked.
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