The Baked Potato Man, London, 1930's

Cinematic Potatoes:

Starring Spuds!

And the Oscar for the Best Line About Potatoes in a film goes to:

Empire of the Sun

“You taught me that people will do anything for a potato.”

Tubers and Tinseltown share a long history together. It probably starts with a little known 1924 D.W.Griffith film called Isn't Life Wonderful? Spuds play a starring role here - publicity stills featured the leading lady and man smiling at each other over a tin basin of dirt-covered potatoes. The plot concerns an impoverished German family, driven from their homes, who live in two rooms in Berlin. They can only afford to eat a potato a day each.

Continue our exhibit on this film starring spuds here.

Potato Growing: Harvest

Digging Potatoes

"Digging Potatoes" engraving by Clare Leighton, 1935.

Our potato crop waits to be dug. As I fork up a root and scrape a potato with my fingernail the skin slips off. All around us work shouts to be done. We have no time now for quiet enjoyment of our garden, for the first frosts and the autumn rains will soon be upon us, checking our digging and planting.

We enjoy digging our potatoes. It is the big treasure hunt of the year, evenmore exciting than searching for the fruit in the tangle of straw round the strawberry plants. The excitement lies in the anticipation we feel each time we stick the fork into the ground. How many potatoes will there be beneath this plant? This anticipation never tires, even after rows of digging. Here is all the mystery of an unknown, invisible harvest. We can see the extent of our peas and beans, and we know that each green-leafed parsnip top will have a corresponding root below, but who can tell how many potatoes huddle beneath the plant that we see above the ground? As my fork brings up the cool, moist potatoes, I lay them out in the sun to dry. They look beautiful as they lie on the earth in creamy rows. The limp, fading haulms curve away from them by their side in regular lines. Minute, undeveloped potatoes cling to the tendril roots of the plants, smooth of skin and fresh of colour in contrast with the decay of the aged seed potato.

"October" by Clare Leighton in Four Hedges: A Gardener's Chronicle

Visit our Digging Potatoes exhibit here.

Belgian Fries
Photos by Janet Wishnetsky, 1978-80

VVVisit our new exhibit here.

Battling Potato Beetles

The Colorado beetle is a serious crop pest of potatoes. The potato beetle is an example of one of the most successful animal migrations is history. In less than 100 years it has spanned the globe.

Visit our exhibit here.

Planting Potatoes

In my sixth miraculous spring
I learned at my father's knee
The fact that potatoes had eyes.
I wondered what they could see
As he cut them, taking care
That every wedge had one
Good eye, or possibly two.
As they struggled against the dark
They must have been up to the mark,
For out of that pail of blue
Granite, a great feast grew.

by John Robert Quinn

I'm a careless potato and care not a pin
How into existence I came;
If they planted me drill-wise or dribbled me in,
To me 'tis exactly the same.
The bean and the pea may more loftily tower,
But I care not a button for them;
Defiance I not with my beautiful flower
When the earth is hoed up to my stem.

by Thomas Moore

Click here for the more poems.

Save Our Spuds

Preserve Planet Potato
--the world's most important vegetable
--a near perfect food source--historically and socially influential
-- currently roiled by controversy, jilted by low-carbers
--its future endangered?

So, what has the potato done for so many? Not so much--just repeatedly saved entire societies from chronic malnutrition and starvation. Click here to visit the exhibit.

The Potato Museum Library:

USA potato industry publication, circa 1917-1925.

View more exhibits from The Potato Museum library here.

Potato head logo of the popular Hollywood jazz night club
The Baked Potato.

Potatoes: New Orleans Style

We're all recalling visits to New Orleans these days---many years ago we discovered some of the best potato cookery ever in what was then the Big Easy, and reported on it in a 1980's issue of PEELINGS, The Potato Museum's newsletter.

"We started our day with breakfast at the Tally Ho on Chartres Street. Their hash browns are made from spuds baked in advance and grated on a clean griddle at time of order. The cook adds a dollop of butter to each pile before he turns them over for final browning.

For lunch, we trekked over to Antoine's early for a look at their "pommes de terre souffles", a restaurant specialty conceived in France in 1837. The spuds are sliced in thin rectangles and deep fried in black iron pots until they puff. They are served hot as hors d'oeuvres in baskets made from woven strips of, yes, potato.

Back to Chartres for dinner at K-Paul's Louisiana Kitchen, one of the few places where tiny boiled Red La Soda potatoes are standard fare, especially superb with Paul's "blackened redfish." Paul also made a mashed potato 'po boy, as well as sliver-thin shoestring potatoes."

For more on pommes de terre souffles and Antoine's Restaurant click here.

Buy our book...the first chapter is about the potato!
(Click here to make your purchase.) Christmas is coming, so snap up this one for your foodie friends and family members hunkered down in armchairs, waiting for fuel prices to drop. Or get the book for active foodie travelers bored with all the usual sites. Gastronomie! Food Museums and Heritage Sites of France is the first extensive exploration ever of French food historic sites, from the Saffron Museum in Boynes to the Chocolate Museum in Biarritz, from the oyster beds of Ile d’Oléron to the melon statue in Cavaillon.

No one else delivers you this kind of book, food-lovers, packed with colorful photos from our trek and from The FOOD Museum's collections. We traveled over 10,000 kilometers around France (someone had to do it) to bring you the backstory of French food. Who is “we?” Meredith Sayles Hughes and Tom Hughes, founders of The FOOD Museum.

Rémi Krug, chair of the Institut des Hautes Études du Goût, writes of Gastronomie! Food Museums and Heritage Sites of France: “ We are delighted that the book is shining light on what is at the very heart of French culture and art de vivre. The Hughes’ guide explores the historical background behind the rich cuisine and taste of France today. It artfully illuminates the creative spirit, dedication, and high professionalism that are preserving gastronomic history in sites across the country.”

Gulliver Harbour Hughes,
potato patch near Lijiang, Yunnan Province, China, 1986

Where in the world have you been photographed wearing The Potato Museum logo?

Send us a photo, tell us where you were, and we will add it to an exhibit under construction.

People who bought a Potato Museum logo shirt when we offered them a twenty years ago, tell us it has always been one of their favorites.

Visit our Potato Museum logo shop here.

So, support The Potato Museum, a non-profit organization, by buying and wearing our logo with pride.

Visitor Comments?

Contact Us

By phone: 505 898 0909

Email: thepotatomuseum12345yahoo.com
(Note: remove the 12345 before emailing us)

Mail: The Potato Museum
P.O. Box 67755
Albuquerque, NM 87193

NOTE: Your privacy is very important to us. If you contact us we will not divulge your personal information to anyone for any reason.

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EXHIBITS:
Amazing Potato
Our Potato Gallery
Potato Hall of Fame
The Literary Potato
Save Our Spuds
Potato Library Exhibits
Potato Heads
The Delicious Potato
Potato Anniversaries
Potato Peelers
Potato Growing
Political Potatoes
Couch Potatoes

2008

In the space of just 400 years, the potato has become a staple crop of many people around the world whose antecedents had subsisted perfectly well upon grain crops for anything up to 4000 years. The reason for this somewhat surprising development is that the potato is the best all-around bundle of nutrition known to mankind. Its ration of carbohydrate to protein is such that anyone eating enough potatoes to satisfy their energy requirements will automatically obtain most of the protein they require. Furthermore, the "biological value" of potato protein (an index of the nitrogen absorbed from a food and retained by the body for growth and maintenance) is 73, second only to eggs at 96; just ahead of soybeans at 72, but far superior to corn (maize) at 54 and wheat at 53. Potatoes also contain significant amounts of essential vitamins (the British, in fact, used to derive 30% of their vitamin C intake from potatoes.) Exceptional productivity is another virtue of the potato. A field of potatoes produces more energy per hectare per day than a field of any other crop. Potatoes grow well from sea level to 14,000 feet on a wider variety of soils, under a wider range of climatic conditions, than any other staple food. The potato matures faster in 90 to 120 days, and will provide small but edible tubers in just 60 days. All in all, the potato is about the world's most efficient means of converting plant, land, water and labour into a palatable and nutritious food.

John Reader, Man on Earth, 1998

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