Homage to the humble spud

It jumped out at me. I couldn’t resist. I know how much my wife wants to recover her youth. How keen she is to wind back the clock. So I bought her a potato sack. To take her back to school sports days.

Feeling generous and a bit guilty, I got her some potato starch body lotion too. Her skin would evoke pleasant memories of good times among nice people in a friendly state. I snubbed the comedy moustachioed potato ornaments.

The Idaho Potato Museum in Blackfoot, Idaho professes to be a historical site. Located in a 1912 railroad depot, it tells the life story of the world’s most loved tuber. And how Marilyn Monroe once had a dress made for her out of a burlap potato sack.

I didn’t know what size my wife takes in potato sacks so I chose “Standard”.

In the 1950s, after Monroe was accused of being cheap and vulgar, Twentieth Century Fox took publicity stills of her to prove burlap can be sexy. Potatoes have never had such good publicity. The bag came from Twin Falls , Idaho.

Surprisingly then, Marilyn is not in the Potato Hall of Fame. Unlike Henry Spaulding, the missionary who first grew potatoes in the state; “Idaho Potato King” Joe Marshall; indefatigable potato shipper, Jack R Simplot; Sim Johnson, who is remembered for his work with sprinkler pipes in the high desert; and Ray DeRoch who is credited with saving the chipping business in Idaho.

These are individuals whose names are synonymous with potatoes. Other inductees are remembered by the museum for their services to collective bargaining and work on the National Potato Council and the potato research, development and experiment station in nearby Aberdeen. But little mention of Sir Walter Raleigh.

The star attraction is definitely the world’s largest and most spectacular stale crisp. The monstrous piece of processed dehydrated potato lies in state in a cabinet. It is beginning to crack.

You read the plaque with reverence. “The Guinness Book of World Records qualifies this at the world’s largest potato crisp”. The oddity was made on June 3rd, 1991 by a team of food engineers employed by Proctor & Gamble, Cincinnati, Ohio.The crisp measures 63 centimetres by 36 centimetres and weighs 153g. It contains 920 calories, the equivalent of 80 regular Pringles potato crisps.

The average American eats about 124 pounds of potatoes per year while Germans eat about twice as much – that’s the sort of information you pick up at the potato museum, as well as table-quiz gems such as, “Thomas Jefferson was the one who introduced French fries to north America.”

I was introduced to the Russet Burban, a local 19th-century blight-resistant classic, and learned all about potato growing practices, the evolution of potato processing technology and development of fertilisers.

The museum has lots of photographs of fields, horse-drawn spud-laden wagons and warehouses. It’s so spud-specific, tourists looking for a steer on where to go in the sprawling state will have to get their information elsewhere.

If you can tear yourself away from the museum and take to the road there’s much to see. Lakes such as Sawtooth, Coeur d’Alene, Priest and Cascade, pioneer towns such as Oakley, the Sun Valley and Sandpoint ski resorts, national wildlife refuges and national monuments with curious names such as the Craters of the Moon with its lava tubes and eye-catching basalt. And wheat fields. One moment you might be driving through soft white country, then hard red and dark northern. Then you hit on potato country and a bewildering range of exotically-named varieties including Purple Peruvians, Yellow Finns and Russian Bananas. Along the way there are little shops selling Red Thumb Fingerlings and Cal Red seeds. You don’t have to go to the Yukon to dig up a Yukon Gold or a Yukon Gem.

All around Idaho, locals are available for potato care advice and will tell you how to avoid green ones. According to those who enjoy their chitting and homming more than most, rounded or long whites are preferred for boiling and baking and the small red ones are ideal for boiling.

Quite unprovoked, kind Idahoans told me how to avoid shrivelling. Especially around the eyes.

They didn’t go far as to get into the finer aspect of peeling or specific grips for specific varieties. But they did constantly caution me not to peel in water if I didn’t want to lose vital nutrients.

My wife has never worn her Idaho Magic US, No 2 packed in Blackfoot, Idaho hessian gunny bag. It’s just not designer enough. And she may be allergic to jute.