Latest news with #potato
The Independent
7 days ago
- Lifestyle
- The Independent
AP PHOTOS: Popular 'kumpir' dish in Turkey is served ahead of International Day of Potato
People in Istanbul 's Ortakoy district enjoy a popular dish, stuffed baked potato known as 'kumpir,' ahead of the International Day of Potato on Friday.
Associated Press
7 days ago
- General
- Associated Press
AP PHOTOS: Popular 'kumpir' dish in Turkey is served ahead of International Day of Potato
ISTANBUL (AP) — People in Istanbul's Ortakoy district enjoy a popular dish, stuffed baked potato known as 'kumpir,' ahead of the International Day of Potato on Friday. ____ This is a photo gallery curated by AP photo editors.
Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Health
- Yahoo
The Dangerous Potato Recall That's Still A Mystery Today
With all the different ways you can slice a potato — or fry, bake, mash, or hash your potato recipes — it's easy to forget how many spuds we're constantly eating. And this means a big enough potato recall can affect millions of people. Usually, the most common reasons foods are recalled involve contamination from harmful bacteria like E. coli or listeria or allergy-triggering substances that aren't mentioned on the box. Sometimes recalls are spurred by pieces of plastic or even metal bits making their way into the food, which can cause an entire product line to be recalled out of caution. However, one potato recall went a step beyond that, and it still remains a mystery today: People were finding potatoes with sewing needles jammed inside of them. The incidents (and they did happen more than once) all took place around Prince Edward Island in eastern Canada around 2014 and 2015. The biggest one was traced to a sizable Canadian operation called Linkletter Farms, which had to initiate an enormous recall after a customer found a sewing needle in freshly bought spuds. Thankfully nobody was injured, but nobody was ever caught, either — and the motivations of whoever it was remain unknown. An investigation found that Linkletter hadn't broken any guidelines for potato processing, leading to wider suspicions among the public that a bad actor had tampered with the food. Read more: Fast Food Chains That Serve The Highest And Lowest Quality French Fries Just a few months after the initial incident, needles were found in french fries at the Cavendish Farms production plant. That time, they were discovered before they ever got a chance to be shipped to stores, so no recall was required. Some of the potatoes that were used to make those fries were from Linkletter Farms, but others were from a different undisclosed source. All in all, over 800,000 pounds of potatoes and french fries still got trashed in the immediate aftermath. The Prince Edward Island Potato Board even offered $50,000 in reward money (later, it was increased to $100,000) for information about the culprit, but the mystery remains unsolved. In 2016, there was yet another report from Halifax of a needle found in a leftover batch of cooked potatoes, though the incident was never officially tied to a specific Prince Edward Island farm. While the details in most of the reports point to intentional food tampering, some investigators have floated the idea that the needles could have been accidentally introduced somewhere along the supply chain or even in the consumer's home. Since then, the scare seems to have calmed down. Prince Edward Island is Canada's central hub for potatoes, and certain plants have upped their security by installing large metal detectors to keep future needles at bay. The sewing needle story remains a potent potato legend in the area, and if it truly was the work of a rogue tamperer, they're still out there somewhere. For more food and drink goodness, join The Takeout's newsletter. Get taste tests, food & drink news, deals from your favorite chains, recipes, cooking tips, and more! Read the original article on The Takeout.
BBC News
07-05-2025
- Business
- BBC News
People rally to help Warwick potato seller after fall
People rally to help potato seller after fall Nina Kelly has been out of work since breaking her shoulder in April People have rallied to help a jacket potato seller who has been unable to work after breaking her shoulder. Business owner Nina Kelly, who is known as the "Warwick potato lady", said she was in a "survival or non-survival situation" as she had been unable to work for two months after falling over in April. "As being self employed, I now have no income but I have my bills still coming in," she told the BBC. Ms Kelly, who runs the stall Posh Potato in the town's Market Place, set up a fundraising page. And her situation has been highlighted by "Spudman", a potato seller from Tamworth who has about four million TikTok followers.
ABC News
06-05-2025
- General
- ABC News
How the potato became popular thanks to Marie-Antoinette, an ex-prisoner of war and French fries
It's hard to imagine a time when the humble potato wasn't one of the most famous vegetables on the planet. From gnocchi to cepelinai, tudou si to French fries, the potato is the original global citizen, the " They can be roasted, baked, braised, boiled, smashed, scalloped, stewed, sauteed or simply fried. Spuds can be added to salads, soups or stews, served as a side dish or planted back in the ground to repopulate. It's this versatility that makes them a household staple. But hundreds of years ago, most Europeans had never heard of the vegetable. "[Back then] if you were encountering a potato, you might think that it was a very, very strange food indeed. It was unlike anything that you'd probably ever seen before," Lauren Samuelsson, food historian and associate lecturer at the University of Wollongong, tells Photo shows Global Roaming podcast Join Walkley award-winner Marc Fennell as he uncovers the incredible moments that changed the course of history. And those who were familiar with the plant were wary of eating it. "Some clergymen were preaching that because the potato hadn't appeared in the Bible, it was not designed for human consumption by God," says Dr Samuelsson. Then came Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, a prisoner-of-war turned unofficial PR agent for the potato. The young man was introduced to spuds while imprisoned behind enemy lines in Prussia, and he lived on little else for several years. Having developed a taste for this prison food, he made it his mission, once released, to revamp the image of the South American vegetable in broader Europe. With the help of Parmentier's "lavish 'potato parties", the vegetable underwent a makeover to become the staple food we know today. Europe's distaste for potatoes The Spanish first observed potatoes when they arrived in South America in 1532 to conquer the Incan Empire. Spuds were domesticated around 8,000 to 12,000 years ago in the Andes region of Peru and north-west Bolivia. The ancestors of today's cultivated potato can still be found growing wild there. There are now thousands of varieties of native potatoes in South America. ( ABC: Caddie Brain ) The Spanish invaders eventually introduced the tubers to Europe, along with other crops including tomatoes and corn. The pursuit of empire brought potatoes into contact with other parts of the world, and they ended up being the fuel that kept those empires going. "[It] was the food of the [Spanish Empire's] enslaved workforce. And that, of course, then allowed the Spanish to build up untold riches and really fuel their imperial ambitions around the world," says Dr Samuelsson. But the arrival of potatoes from the New World to the Old World was initially greeted with scepticism. The foreign vegetable, with its knobbly, misshapen design and textured skin, reminded folks of leprosy-infected limbs and stoked fears that the potato was a physical manifestation of the contagious disease. Dr Samuelsson explains this was because the prevailing medical opinion at the time posited that whatever caused or cured a disease "often looked like the disease that it was causing [or curing]". Photo shows Image of Dr Karl on a pink background and Listen app logo Dr Karl knows the best app for free podcasts, radio, music, news and audiobooks … and you don't need to be a scientist to find it! People also thought potatoes might be poisonous due to its links to the nightshade family, to the extent that the French parliament even banned the tuber in 1748. Another problem was that the wildly different climate conditions between Europe and South America did not suit It took decades for the potato to adapt to the shorter European growing season, though it had better luck growing in Ireland. "At the very beginning, it would have only been the very poorest of people who were eating potatoes," says Dr Samuelsson. Bread remained the staple food across Europe in the 18th century, but that soon changed thanks to rising prices, a revolution and a potato 'influencer'. French royalty at a potato party Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was a pharmacist in the French army when he was captured by Prussians and held as a prisoner of war in the mid-1700s. Antoine-Augustin Parmentier was a French pharmacist and agronomist. ( Supplied: Wikicommons/François Dumont ) His diet consisted largely of potato mash for the three years he was detained. At the time, Prussians were encouraged to plant and eat potatoes in the belief that if they were ever invaded, they could live off a vegetable buried underground. After his release, Parmentier became the potato's biggest advocate. A large part of his obsession with the vegetable seemed to be rooted in his own good health after years of eating only one food. Parmentier's hypothesis was that the potato must hold nutritional value. In 1770, he wrote a prize-winning essay, titled Inquiry into Nourishing Vegetables That in Times of Necessity Could Be Substituted for Ordinary Food, which argued in favour of using potatoes as an alternative to bread. Its release coincided with rising prices and food shortages in France, which had in turn fuelled unrest and anger in towns and villages up and down the country. "France and lots of European countries [were] one bad year away from famine because they [were] so reliant on wheat as their staple crop," says Dr Samuelsson. But in order for the potato to be fully embraced by society, Parmentier needed to get the elite on board. And the best way to do that was by throwing extravagant dinners. "On the advice of Benjamin Franklin, the American statesman who was over in France as an ambassador, [Parmentier] started to throw these potato parties where he would invite all of his mates," says Dr Samuelsson. Parmentier was well-connected to the French elite and used the gatherings to introduce the arbiters of cultural taste to various potato delicacies, from soup to dessert and "even potato vodka". Yet the ultimate tick of approval lay with the French king and queen, Louis XVI and his wife, Marie Antoinette. Queen Marie Antoinette reportedly attended a potato party in the 18th century. ( Supplied: National Gallery of Australia ) "The story goes that Parmentier, in one of his amazing potato parties, somehow swings it that the king and queen [came] to one of these events," says Dr Samuelsson. " When they got there, he presented them with a bouquet of potato flowers, and apparently they were so enchanted, they loved it so much that [King] Louis put potato flowers in his lapel. And Marie Antoinette decorated her hair with potato flowers. " From banned vegetable to a viable substitute for bread, the potato's evolution continued until it made its way into some the world's most famous dishes. Fried potatoes arrive in America When one of America's founding fathers, Thomas Jefferson, arrived in Paris to serve as ambassador to the French court, the potato frenzy was in full swing. "While he was over there, he was obviously hobnobbing with the great and the good. And he almost certainly could have been at one of Parmentier's parties," says Dr Samuelsson. Thomas Jefferson was a Francophile. ( Supplied: Wikicommons/Rembrandt Peale ) Jefferson developed a taste for the local cuisine, encouraging his enslaved chef James Hemings to learn to cook French food. Hemings reportedly One of those recipes was on how to make "pommes de terre frites a cru en petites tranches" or deep-fried potatoes in small cuttings. "Deep frying was becoming a real art in France … and so you can connect the dots here that someone's decided to find out what happens if you put potatoes in boiling hot oil," says Dr Samuelsson. While it's debated whether Jefferson was the first to introduce French fries to the US, his notes contain perhaps the It took more than a century for French fries to be fully embraced in America, and debate still rages over the origins of the fried potato: In Ireland, however, the tuber has a very different reputation. Too much of a good thing Potatoes are perhaps best remembered now for bringing about one of the worst famines in history. The Irish were dependent on potatoes as their primary food source until they were destroyed by a blight. ( Getty: Universal History Archive/Universal Images Group ) Centuries ago, Irish peasants became reliant on the tuber after a wave of British imperial expansion deprived them of valuable land needed to farm grains and livestock and forced them into areas where fewer foods could be cultivated. Potatoes, peasants discovered, were one of the few plants that flourished in those less arable areas. "The Irish started to really rely on potatoes and it became the main part of their diet. Irish workers … would eat anywhere between 10 to 12 pounds of potatoes a day, which is four to six kilos," says Dr Samuelsson. But that all changed in 1845, when a fungus-like pathogen, Phytophtora infestans, also known as a blight, infected potato crops and made them inedible. Without their primary source of food, the Irish starved. In decades, the population halved. "When you become too reliant on one thing, it's a recipe for disaster," says Dr Samuelsson. Potato blight and famine are still a risk in many corners of the globe to this day. But it hasn't stopped the potato's dizzying rise in the culinary space. Today, it is the world's "There's not really a cuisine around the world that doesn't use potatoes and hasn't incorporated it into their food cultures, which I think just shows how wonderfully versatile it is," says Dr Samuelsson. "But it definitely still has a colonial legacy to it." 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