As Lakeland residents enjoy the Thanksgiving long weekend, with friends, family, good food and beautiful scenery, there is much to be thankful for ... even in the kitchen.
It can take a lot of prep work for those fortunate to have family, friends and food around them this Thanksgiving. Part of that work is the dreaded potato-prep. Washing and peeling the spuds is still considered one of the tough tasks in the military. For anyone assigned to KP Duty, the Kitchen Police task often involves washing pots, mopping floors and peeling the spuds.
Perhaps because of that association, the tater gets a bad rap — but without it, where would Thanksgiving supper be?
Across Canada, this holiday weekend more than 30 million pounds of potatoes are estimated to have been peeled, boiled, roasted or mashed for Thanksgiving meals.
Sure, they are delicious and nutritious — but what do you really know about whats inside that 10-pound bag of spuds you just bought for $8.99 from the local Sobeys or Independent Grocer?
Potato plants belong to the nightshade family of flowering plants and what ends up being made into a gravy moat on the Thanksgiving plate is actually called a tuber.
With help from the *Potato Growers of Alberta ... we've boiled down some rapid-fire tater-tidbits:
• The potato is so rich in nutrients that it ranks as the world’s fourth most important food crop.
• In Alberta, most potatoes are made into French Fries.
• A medium sized baked potato has around 100 calories, is fat free and gluten free.
• Potatoes are rich in complex carbohydrates ( good carbs) which is an excellent source of energy.
• Potatoes have the highest protein content of any root vegetable.
• Potatoes are rich in Vitamin C - a single medium sized potato contains about half the recommended daily intake...more than an orange and an apple.
• A potato has more Potassium than a banana.
(* Another fun fact presented for this article from the Lac La Biche POST newsroom is that the Potato Growers of Alberta, in events that for some reason involve both sports and vegetables, is more likely to be referred to as 'the other PGA'.)
Like gravy leaking from the mashed potato mountain and slow flowing across the plate, going further afield when it comes to potato fun facts brings us to the *Idaho Potato Museum, where spud specialist tell us that:
An 8 ounce baked or boiled potato has only about 100 calories. The average American eats about 124 pounds of potatoes per year while Germans eat about twice as much. In 1974, an Englishman named Eric Jenkins grew 370 pounds of potatoes from one plant. Thomas Jefferson gets the credit for introducing “french fries” to America when he served them at a White House dinner. According to the Guinness Book of World Records, the largest potato grown was 7 pounds 1 ounce by J. East (1953) and J. Busby (1982) of Great Britain. The world’s largest potato chip crisp (on exhibit at the Potato Museum) was produced by the Pringle’s Company in Jackson, TN, in 1990. It measures 23″ x 14.5″. Potato blossoms used to be a big hit in royal fashion. Potatoes first became fashionable when Marie Antoinette paraded through the French countryside wearing potato blossoms in her hair.*An associated fun fact that the Lac La Biche POST newsroom discovered when it opened up some pages for research, is that there actually is a potato museum in Idaho. Cool.
Far outThe most out-of-this world piece of tater-trivia we could find is that in October of 1995, the potato became the first vegetable to be grown in space. NASA and the University of Wisconsin, Madison, created the technology with the goal of feeding astronauts on long space voyages, and eventually, feeding future space colonies.
So whether you were in the kitchen this Thanksgiving assigned to KP Duty, or enjoyed a spud or two with friends, family or by yourself, be thankful for the little super-tuber that feeds our world ... and maybe others in the future.
