Ah the humble potato a food loved by some and hated by others because *gasp* it is a carb! Well, you know what, I don’t care if it is a carb you will have to pry my potatoes out of my cold dead hands to take them away from me. I come from a good sturdy stock of Irish and German folk and I love my potatoes. Growing up, my family did not have a lot of money. We did not have a lot of extra’s and expensive meals out all of that, but we always had enough to eat. We were always full of good stick to your tummy meals. Even when we went on our summer week away to the lake cabin with my Great Grandma (shared costs) those tasty meals followed and often were grilled! Were they fancy? No, they sure weren’t, but they were hot, tasted good and gave me a lot of fond memories and comfort foods to take with me on my journey through life.

When it comes right down to it, I will always prefer the good ole stick to your ribs kind of meals over the fancy pants stuff you find sometimes. Why does food have to be so frilly these days? Take a stroll on pintrest and find a great many beautifully plated dishes with a million ingredients. Do not get me wrong, fancy food is good too, and it is a great treat sometimes (especially when you don’t have to cook it) but really, who has time for that? With jobs, kids, pets and everything else going on in our lives, why do we have to worry about making fancy pants well plated meals during the week as well?

I for one don’t. I want my family to eat well, as healthy as possible and have the same kind of memories built as I did when I was a kid. Despite a busy schedule of work and life in general I really do work on that comfort food for dinner. I make what I can ahead of time and have things ready to go a well, so dinner does not have to be a stressful event. Alas, I digress the humble potato is the focus here.

Why a post about potatoes? Recently as I was chatting with someone in a waiting room as I made a menu for the next week, she commented that I sure was making a lot of that “carbohydrate peasant food.” Excuse me? I wanted to beat her with my notebook, but sometimes discretion is the better part of valor and I just gave her a fairly disdainful look and moved to the other side of the room for myself. So then I started thinking about her commented and looked at my menu. Yes, there was a fair amount of potato there.

Southern fried chicken with Mash and fresh green beans
A simple pan seared pork chops with rosemary roasted potatoes and kale
Poor man’s supper (a childhood favorite of mine, it is basically a version of shepherds pie) corn, hamburger and mashed potatoes

Three meals with potatoes in a week of meals. That is not overly much to me. Seemed perfectly normal to me and my family enjoys the meals. The humble potato can be made in so many ways! It takes on so many flavors delightfully! So why is it getting flack these days? The humble potato fed the Irish and was so involved in their lives that when the great potato famine hit, so many died. From the years of 1780 and 1841 the humble potato staved off starvation of the poor Irish. One acre of potatoes could feed a family of 6 for nearly a year if rationed well and the crop was good. As meat, bread and other things vanished from the Irish table most of their meals began to consist of a potato and milk, which in it’s raw form is a super food and this made the meal completely nutritionally complete. As the potato fed the masses the population doubled in the country! Not too bad for the humble potato yes?

Sadly, in 1845 a blight hit the crop of potatoes entire crops could be lost in a matter of hours the blight was so terrible and aggressive. The people were saved that year as they slaughtered pigs, which ate up to 1/3 of the crop every year and then were able to eat the pork. However, in 1846 the blight got worse and killed around 90% of the crop. Not only did this deeply affect what people had to eat, but it prevented a new crop of potatoes from even being planted. The blight was not as bad in 1847 perhaps because of the low yield of the crop, but in 1848 and 1849 it was back and terrible. That is when the famine was to truly set in. At the end when the dust had settled 1 million people had moved to the United States while 2 million died. Death came from starvation itself as well as dysentery, cholera and other issues that people were unable to fight off due to starvation.

So next time someone gives me crap about potatoes I am going to remind them what happened when the lovely little tuber wasn’t healthy. I know this was a bit of an extreme post for something like a potato but that is just how I am rolling lately.

When people say go no carb I cringe. I love bread. I really really love bread. There have been times when I make a meal out of bread, butter, cheese nice crusty french bread call it good. Yum. Recently I have become addicted to Oaknut bread by Oroweat it is really delicious bread and the little flakes on the top YUM. Sadly like most bread it has preserves in it. The bright side is that it doesn’t have high fructose corn syrup and No artificial colors or flavors so it is better then some breads. However, I am working on cutting out as much as the preserves in my diet as possible. One step at a time right? And I wont ever give up my Pepsi no matter what. Luckily for me I did some looking and there is an old cook book (1964) that has something similar and I may try it out, I have been meaning to get back into making fresh bread, I would trade out the pecans for a different nut though.

Ingredients

1 cup steel-cut oats; (rolled oats work just fine, too)
1/4 cup honey
1 tablespoon Butter
1 teaspoons Salt
2 cups boiling water
4 cups unbleached flour; divided use
1 packet dry yeast
1/4 cup water; 90-degree
1 cup pecans; broken

Original recipe makes 24

Servings

Preparation

Place oats, honey, butter, and salt into a large mixing bowl. Pour 2 cups of boiling water over them and stir well. Stir in 2 cups of flour. While this mixture cools, dissolve the dry yeast in 1/4 cup of 90-degree water.

After about 10 minutes, stir the yeast mixture into the oat mixture, mixing thoroughly. Stir in 1 cup of pecans.

Work in 2 cups of flour. Turn the dough out onto a floured board, and with floured hands, knead the dough for 8 – 10 minutes. Keep enough flour on the board and your hands to prevent the dough from sticking.

Place the dough in a greased bowl and cover it with a damp cloth. Let the dough rise in a warm, draft-free place for 1-1/2 hours, or until it has doubled in bulk. Punch the dough down, and turn it out onto a floured board, this time kneading it for about 5 minutes.

Shape the dough into two equal-sized loaves, place them in two greased loaf pans. Let the loaves rise, covered with a damp cloth, in a warm place until they have doubled in bulk, about 1 hour.

Bake in a pre-heated 375-degree oven for about 45 minutes. Turn out onto wire racks to cool. Let loaves cool completely before wrapping to store.

Sounds really good right?