Fun with Spuds

"What we need is a few taters. Po-tay-toes. Boil ‘em, mash ‘em, stick ‘em in a stew."
 - Samwise, "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers"

Here in the moviehouse, we always look forward to the Yuletide for such time-honored traditions as annoying holiday music, contentious relatives and in-laws, seasonal affective disorder, and overcrowded malls. We rubbed elbows at the shoppers’ respite that is a watering hole with an acquaintance exhausted from battling the Christmas throngs, and she was particularly dumfounded by the exorbitant price of a deluxe Mr. Potato Head toy she came across. Playskool’s Mr. Potato Head Silly Suitcase (above), including 40 different body parts and accessories, retails for $50. We shared her astonishment, especially because we still harbor nostalgic memories of when Mr. Potato Head was, in fact, a real potato.

The toy was originally separate plastic parts (eyes, nose, ears, mouth) with pushpins that could be attached to a potato or other vegetable (above). Mr. Potato Head was invented by George Lerner (below), and first manufactured and distributed in 1952 by toy company Hassenfeld Brothers (later Hasbro), who bought the rights for $7000.

It was the first toy to be advertised on television. Responding to complaints about rotting potatoes and new government safety regulations, Hasbro included a plastic potato body with the toy set beginning in 1960.

In 1987, Mr. Potato Head surrendered his signature pipe to U.S. Surgeon General C. Everett Koop and became the "spkespud" for the American Cancer Society’s annual "Great American Smokeout" campaign (above). The inimitable Don Rickles (below) famously gave voice to an especially sarcastic Mr. Potato Head in the three "Toy Story" films, from 1995 to 2010.

We guess one of the earliest recreational uses of potatoes in our childhood was "One Potato, Two Potatoes," a circular game utilizing a choosing rhyme to divide a classroom into groups or simply to practice counting. And it was in early arts-and-crafts lessons where we learned how to carve potatoes into ink stamps.

What strikes us singularly about this herbaceous annual is that once you peer behind the eyes and peel away the skin, the potato stands alone as the most versatile vegetable in the timeline of human history. "Our ancestors," Annalee Newitz, an American journalist and author of White Trash: Race and Class in America, wrote, "loved to go out for tubers…So thousands of years ago we weren’t all going ‘2001,’ with guys in ratty cloaks grunting. In fact, the prehistoric world wasn’t full of guys with spears hunting meat…but instead lots of people with spoons digging up yummy potatoes."

Ancient Incas plant potatoes

The starchy tuber was first domesticated in what is now southern Peru and northwestern Bolivia between 8000 and 5000 BCE. Incas developed the earliest type of freeze-drying when they left potatoes out to freeze overnight and dry during the day. After a matter of days, these dried potato pulps could be stored for up to a year.

Modern day Incas harvest potatoes

Following the Spanish conquest (or, more correctly, decimation) of the Inca Empire, Spaniards introduced the potato to European farmers in the second half of the 16th century. The ill-fated Queen of France, Marie Antoinette (1755-1793), once wore a headdress of potato flowers to an elegant ball.

Potato flowers

Contrary to popular belief, white potatoes, originating in South America, and sweet potatoes, from the Caribbean, had yet to reach North America in time for the first Thanksgiving dinner in 1621 (below). (As a matter of fact, it would be another 50 years before an Englishman wrote about boiling cranberries and sugar into a tasty sauce.)

Potatoes were planted in Idaho as early as 1838. Today, Boise State University is home to the Famous Idaho Potato Bowl, an annual NCAA-sanctioned college football bowl game which debuted in 1997.

Famous Idaho Potato Bowl trophy

In 1845, a plant disease known as late blight spread through the poorer communities of western Ireland, resulting in crop failures that led to the Great Irish Famine. Hundreds of thousands of Irish emigrated to America. Irish immigrants were an important asset in the growth of Chicago, Illinois. By 1850, they accounted for about one-fifth of Chicago’s population. Then in 1871, Chicago Tribune reporter Michael Ahern fabricated a story that the Great Chicago Fire, which killed hundreds, left a third of the population homeless and destroyed a third of the city, started when a cow kicked over a lantern while Mrs. Catherine O’Leary, an Irish immigrant, was milking it on the family farm.

Legend has it that the original potato chip recipe was created in Saratoga Springs, New York, on August 24, 1853. Angered by a customer complaining that his fried potatoes were too thick, soggy and bland, a resort hotel chef, George Clum, sliced potatoes as thinly as possible and fried them until crisp, seasoning them with extra salt, only to be surprised when the patron (sometimes named as railroad tycoon Cornelius Vanderbilt) loved the chips, which became a regular item on the menu as "Saratoga Chips."

Mike-sell’s Potato Chip Company, founded in Dayton, Ohio, in 1910 as a producer of dried beef and sausage, began making Saratoga Chips and billed itself as the "oldest potato chip company in the United States," a claim disputed by New England-based Tri-Sum Potato Chips, founded in 1908, which calls itself America’s first potato chip manufacturer.

Right here in our backyard, potato chip manufacturer Old Dutch Foods began in St. Paul, Minnesota, in 1934, moved to Minneapolis in 1937, then to Roseville, Minnesota, in 1968. In 2010, the Minneapolis Star Tribune’s fifth annual Taste 50, a tribute to "tastemakers, trends, products and places that emphasize why Minnesota can’t be beat when it comes to great things to eat," celebrated Old Dutch Potato Chips (#11) for "scratching Minnesota’s munchies itch for 76 years."

Since the company opened a plant in Winnipeg, Manitoba, in 1954, Old Dutch Potato Chips have remained a popular snack in Canada, where flavors unique to the country include Ketchup, Crispy Bacon, Salt ‘n’ Vinegar, and Spicy Chili Ketchup.

Idaho Potato Commission spokesperson Denise Austin

Of course, the wondrous variety of foods made with potatoes goes far beyond a mere snack item. Past the vast array of preparing potatoes - baked, boiled, mashed, scalloped, au gratin, pan-fried, french-fried, hash browns, tater tots - the versatile tuber is in indispensable ingredient in breads, salad, soup, pancakes, blintzes, dumplings, burritos, and on and on. Potato skins and honey are a common folk remedy for burns in India, where burn centers have also used the outer skin of potatoes to protect burns while healing. Inevitably, people figured out how to distill fermented potatoes (like human beings have always attempted to distill every vegetable, fruit, grain, and sugar under the sun since time immemorial) into an alcoholic beverage, vodka.

James Garner and Steve McQueen sample potato vodka secretly distilled in
a German POW camp to celebrate the Fourth of July in "The Great Escape"

 It was equally inevitable that the spud would become the root of so many amusing pastimes, besides the previously mentioned "One Potato, Two Potatoes" game and potato stamp crafts. In the 1909 book Games for the Playground, Home, School and Gymnasium, author Jesse H. Bancroft (Assistant Director Physical  Training, Public Schools, New York City; ex-Secretary American Physical Education Association; member American Association for the Advancement of Science) outlined rules for two versions of a potato race (not to be confused with a potato sack race), a running contest in which individual or teams compete to collect potatoes in a receptacle, along with instructions for a potato spoon race and a potato shuttle relay (an informal game following strict rules "used by the Girls’ Branch of the Public Schools Athletic League, New York City").

Not so strictly regulated is our schoolday favorite, "Hot Potato," in which the participant holding the spud when the music stops is out (not unlike musical chairs), and the play continues until only one is left - a game which may go back as far as the 1880s.

The potato gun started as a child’s toy capable of firing a plug of potato. A kid would puncture the vegetable with the gun’s hollow tip to pry out a small pellet, which fit snugly in the barrel and could fire - at short range and low-powered - the tuberous projectile.

After World War II, a gentleman by the name of E. Joseph Cossman noticed that the U.S. had a sizable potato surplus, so, along with his brother-in-law, Milton Levine (co-founder of Uncle Milton Toys, famous for Milton’s Ant Farm), he purchased machinery from the original manufacturer of a failed spud gun toy in the 1930s. With much fanfare, Cossman and Levine made the potato gun a best seller.

Technology unavoidably allowed for more advanced adult toys like the potato cannon and spudzooka (above), pipe-based ordnance which use air pressure or combustive fuel to launch whole potatoes at dangerously high speeds, sometimes resulting in injury.

And that brings to mind the storied prank of sticking a potato in the tailpipe of a rival’s car, presumably stalling the motor, splitting the muffler, or, at worst, destroying the engine. The urban legend was debunked on a 2004 episode of the Discovery Channel’s "Mythbusters" when the hosts demonstrated that a variety of obstructions, including the venerable potato, were immediately ejected from the exhaust once the engine turned over.

Scientifically, by utilizing the vegetable’s phosphoric acid and zinc and copper electrodes, a potato can be used as a battery. Politically, America’s most incompetent vice president and historical whipping boy, Dan Quayle, committed his most infamous blunder in 1992 when he altered a 12-year-old student’s correct spelling of potato to "potatoe" at a Trenton, New Jersey elementary school spelling bee.

The year 2008 was declared International Year of the Potato by the United Nations in recognition of its importance as a staple in the diet of the world’s population.

Speaking of significant dates, one might want to note these milestones on the calendar (and pick up appropriate Hallmark greeting cards): National Potato Chip Day falls on March 14; National French Fry Day is July 13; National Potato Month is September; National Potato Week (in England) is the first week of October; and National Potato Day is celebrated October 27.

Postscript:

Peeling potatoes as punishment for some infraction became a staple gag in several armed service comedies during and following World War II, when a hapless enlisted soldier would end up being assigned to KP ("kitchen patrol" duty), as seen here in 1957's "The Sad Sack," starring Jerry Lewis.