SC - Period Potatoes

[Mark Schuldenfrei]

Laurene wrote:
     I had seen that comment before that "Potatoes aren't period" but I don't
  see how this is possible.  There were Irish people living during Medival
  times, and  potatoes in Ireland are a STAPLE food!  In fact, I saw on TLC
  once, where hundreds of thousands of Irish men women and children starved to
  death at one point (sorry, it was a few months ago, and I dont' remember the
  date cited) because of a blight brought in from England that destroyed ALL
  the potato crops on the Island.  It left the poor with nothing (as the show
  stated it , "not very little to eat but NOTHING to eat") to eat for many
  months, and the population was devastated.  I'm far from an expert in
  Medival cooking, but I do not see how potatoes could be anything but period!

Well, the truth is, the end of period was a long time ago, and the end of
the medieval period was even further back in time.

Potatoes were introduced into Ireland after period, but still a very long
time ago.  There are whole books on the topic of the foodstuffs of Ireland,
and the diaspora and death from the great famine.  I've only read digests
and abstracts of them, but it seems to be a consuming (ahem) topic.

	Tibor
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