potato

I suppose it's a little unfair of me to keep extolling the virtues of my "Scratch Kitchen" concept without really telling you the staple ingredients you need to have on hand for this method to work. So, starting the week, I'm going to tell you about a Scratch Kitchen staple, the potato, and give...

The greatest potato consumer in the U.S. is McDonalds (MCD), which buys 1.5 million tons of spuds every year to make french fries for the world. Of course, buying so much of a single commodity means McDonald's choices greatly affect the rest of the country -- and it makes the company an easy target...

Were you aware that the United Nations had declared 2008 as the International Year of the Potato? World wide, the magnificent potato has been gathering increased attention as a highly valuable food crop. In America, we have had a long and delicious relationship with potatoes. We love them fried,...

Prices for the big carbohydrate commodities -- wheat, corn, rice -- have all exploded. But one starch remains relatively cheap: the potato. That's why the U.N. and agriculture scientists are starting to push the potato as the new cheap starch for the masses. Happy International Year of the Potato,...

When I was in college, one of my teachers assigned us Fernand Braudel's Civilization and Capitalism, a three-volume history of the world between the 15th and 18th centuries. It was incredibly dense, fairly boring and weighed about twenty pounds. I read the whole thing, a feat that still amazes me....