SC - OT Dogs vs Cats...

[Badger]

Bear wrote:
>Why would they be worried about side effects when potatoes were found being
>used as food in Peru?  Considering the Conquistador's supply methods, I'm
>certain potatoes were well tested before they ever reached Spain.

IIRC, tomatoes were grown first in Europe as ornamental plants and people
hesitated to eat them, considering them poisonous, although the peoples of
the New World ate them without obvious harm.

It took a while before many people were willing to eat them. We had a
recent thread discussing tomatoes. From it i gather that the Spanish,
followed by the Italians (or at least Sicilians) were among the earliest
Europeans to eat tomatoes, in the first quarter of the 16th C., and perhaps
some Near Easterners as well. Whereas in England and Northern Europe it
took longer - until the end of the 16th or beginning of the 17th C. (and
there's that story about some nobleman ordering his people to eat potatoes,
otherwise they wouldn't... although it may be more legend than history...)

My point is, many people are often "shy" to eat unfamiliar foods, in my
modern experience. And since both tomatoes and potatoes (patata) are
solanaceous (i.e., related to nightshade), if this was recognized at that
time, it might explain a couple generations of hesitancy to eat them.
Additionally, Europeans might have thought that the peoples of the New
World could eat things Europeans couldn't or shouldn't since, after all,
the "working class" and the "ruling class" in Europe ate different foods
which were considered appropriate to their differing physiques and needs.
(and the produce of solanaceous plants are the only absolutely forbidden
foods in the Macrobiotic diet of Japanese origin) This is just my
speculation and nothing i have documentation for.

- -----

Another aside - potatoes come in a variety of colors from their homeland.
Some Peruvian recipes i read a couple decades ago said that yellow fleshed
potatoes were more common in Peru than white fleshed ones. At that time
(mid-1970's), yellow potatoes were not generally available and the recipe
called for the addition of a dash of turmeric to give it the appropriate
color. (the recipe was delicious, but obviously not terribly ancient - it
called for boiled potatoes, hard-cooked eggs, olives, crumbled fresh white
cheese, and seasonings)

Anyone know what sorts of patata/potatoes the Spaniards brought back?

- -----

As for the batata/sweet potato question - what we Americans call "yams" and
what we call "sweet potatoes" are from the same family and vary in color
from yellow to dark orange.

However, what are called "yams" in other parts of the world (Africa,
Southeast Asia) are very different, being starchy tubers that are usually
white, very white - *much* whiter than a white potato - and having a
distictly different consistency when cooked. When i lived in Java,
Indonesia, these were never part of a meal, but were cooked and served for
snacks, usually sweetened and sometimes fermented for a couple days first.
I believe they may be staple foods in the Outer Islands of Indonesia which
don't have irrigated rice sawah ("sawah" means "wet rice field"; "padi"
means "unhusked rice"). They grow dry rice, and also maize, in the Outer
Islands.


these off topic ramblings brought to you by
Anahita Gaouri bint-Karim al-Fassi


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