AURA

I suppose a tour of Grand Canyon doesn’t strike most tourists as an occasion to talk about potatoes, but IF we ever get this thing off the web and into reality, we WILL have a café. And wherever you’re staying, you already undoubtedly have to decide every day what to do about potatoes, potato chips, whatever. So, don’t be surprised. At least don’t be as surprised as Coronado.

You know, Coronado, with all the research you’ve done about the Spanish incursion into America, I just can’t fathom how you missed that one of the things they discovered in America was the potato. I looked this up and found that conquistador Juan de Castellanos, in seeking to describe a new dining experience, called the potato “a dainty dish, even for Spaniards. (Thank you, R. N. Salaman, The History and Social Influence of the Potato, 1949, p. 102)

And then I found this book called

Reay Tannahill, Food in History (New York: Three Rivers Press, 1988), p.215:

that says that at higher elevations in Peru, where corn cannot grow, what people relied on were tubers like oca, quinoa, and potatoes. Get this:

Wikipedia, retrieved and edited 11/9/2008:

Wild potato species occur from the United States to Uruguay and Chile. Genetic testing of the wide variety of cultivars and wild species suggest that the potato has a single origin in the area of southern Peru, from a species in the Solanum brevicaule complex. Thousands of varieties persist in the Andes, where over 100 varieties might be found in a single valley, and a dozen or more might be maintained by a single agricultural household. The potato was introduced to Europe in 1536 [not long after Pizzaro conquered the Incas in 1533], and subsequently by European mariners to territories and ports throughout the world.

In my opinion, it’s as amazing as it is laughable how the popularity of this humble tuber has come to be “owned” by one and all, from our Coronado’s presuming it to be owned by the Irish because of the news it brought to the history books, to it’s incorporation into religious custom such as Judaism’s Hannukah latkes (fried potato pancakes), by no means a Peruvian product, since frying as a cooking method wasn’t known in the America’s until the Europeans arrived.

I blame it on the high nutritional value that inspired its food use on the limited deck space of 16th century sailing ships; the same nutritional value that points to it as a solution to the current world population boom and that christened 2008 as the International Year of the Potato.

CORONADO

Okay okay. I get it. I get it. Holy potato.

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