Space Potato?!?
HappyEarth
14 Comments
They say home-grown organic produce is worlds apart from what you find in the supermarket. Our recent potato harvest certainly proves that – we’re just not sure which world these potatoes came from! It’s not very often you find yourself in hysterical laughter while harvesting home-grown spuds – but digging up these two huge, knobbly, potatoes the other day, had us face down in the dirt with belly laughter.
We often find funny shaped sweet potatoes in the garden, but our potato harvests have always resulted in an abundance of rather standard shaped round or oval potatoes. Nothing unusual, until these guys. Perhaps they’re just expressing their individuality. Or maybe, they really are potatoes from space, who were hiding behind the satellites taking the photos of everyones backyard for Google Earth, and decided they better come check out what on earth is going on in that suburban block...
On a more serious note, the embracing of uniquely shaped fruits and veg, which may be a little too curvy or pointy in the wrong places, or have some markings or colouring a little out of the ordinary, is a serious sustainability issue. Having standardised Barbie-doll like produce lining the supermarket shelves, means a lot of quality food that doesn’t fit the mould is going to waste.
In the EU, they only recently relaxed tight regulation about the appearance of a range of different fruit and vegetables allowed on the market – for example, cucumbers could not be bent by a curve of more than 10mm per 10cm. They estimated by allowing more ‘imperfect’ produce on the market, they could reduce the amount of wasted farm produce by a whopping 20% (http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,24640823-26040,00.html). Though there doesn’t seem to be any strict regulation on the shape and size of produce able to be sold in Australia, when was the last time you saw a forked carrot on the supermarket shelves?
It’s time to celebrate the cultural diversity and individuality of our fruit and veg – space potatoes and all. What’s the most unique produce you've come across?
Reader Comments (14)
Hey Guys,, These are indeed very weirdly shaped... but i bed they still taste the same as a normal potato would.. YOu are right there is lot of waste.. Hope u guys are enjoying the long weekend.. Ive been out pruning my roses.. was hoping to get down the gardens today but i have a cold again.. can't believe it.!! I got really wet down at the gardens during the week and i think that may have done it!!
Take care
Donna.
Two legged carrots are probably the only things, seen in a farmers market, not a supermarket though. I have found that if I buy juicing apples and carrots you get perfectly good slightly blemished produce for a fraction of the price of "perfect" specimens. My kids are none the wiser.
Fabulous potatoes!!
We have had some "sus" looking carrots in the past and at the end of the season our cucumbers were curling into circles. The kids think it's fabulous.
I do hope people begin to change their thinking about what a fruit and vegetable should look like.I think the more heirloom varieties people grow the more their standard idea will change.
Maybe you could have a space vegetable swap or a space vegies dinner to celebrate your unique potatoes.
wow they are pretty outrageous looking potatoes! i am sure dwight would appreciate a post about space potatoes :) we cant wait to check them and all of your other wonderful fruits and vegies out in just THREE WEEKS TIME!!
Our potatoes looked like that too! We also harvested some Jerusalem Artichokes on the weekend. They had really weird, distorted shapes too - nothing like the ones you see in the supermarket.
I was really amazed at the yield, too. I was expecting maybe 5 or 6 smallish tubers, but I just kept digging and digging and finding more and more! In the end, I got about 2 kg of Jerusalem Artichokes from an area of 2 or 3 square feet!
Glad you have all enjoyed our amusing potatoes! Love the idea of an 'out of space' vegetable dinner to celebrate our unique harvest Fay - we might do just that! Great to hear about your curly cumcumbers too Fay, and two legged carrots Greenfumb.
Fantastic to hear you got such an abundant jurusalem artichoke harvest Darren. That's a very impressive harvest from such a small area! Funny that you have amusingly shaped potatoes too - maybe something with the weather around our part of the world at this time of year, or maybe space potatoes are invading the Illawarra?!
They are weird potatoes -look delicious though. Rarely do I see odd looking veges in the supermarket but just yesterday I saw the strangest eggplant. It looked like two egg plants that had fused with a rather strange appendage out one side.
I only started to realise how much fruit and veges must not make to to the supermarkets after joining a local fruit and vege coop. I love getting blemished fruit and don't mind the odd bruise or even worm hole.
Supermarket fruit and veges is amazinly uniform. I wonder how many apples get rejected for each one we see on the shelf? Hopefully most of the ulgly fruit still gets used in some way.
I must admit I am still struggling with accepting fruit and veg that isn't perfect. I think it is a life time of conditioning. I am getting better though, eventually I will break the conditioning.
I always grow forked and twisted carrots (I have switched to the small round ball carrots now) and my cucumbers would be well and truly rejected by the EU.
Emma
http://the--berry--patch.blogspot.com/
genuine real-life space potatoes! how very awesome :) i am sad i will miss their preparation in food... surely something that would be out of this world (especially with you two behind the stove).
as for fruit and vegetable waste, it must be shocking. i'd imagine it's even worse here in japan - every single piece of fruit you buy looks perfect. it's amazing.
i like to think the ones that look a little bit different still get used for frozen veggies, or something like that... hopefully.
keep up the space vegetables :)
Love the spuds - make sure you update after the tasting please. We're market gardeners and find flemington is the reason everything looks perfect in the supermarkets. We dropped of 450kg of tomatoes one day that tasted beautiful, looked a treat and were chemical free. We had a call 2 hours later to pick them up again. Why? they were too big for a cherry tomato, too small for a normal tomato and size wasn't uniform in the boxes. Our hens were happy that week, even if we were poorer.
first quality fruit and veg here has to live up to a set of standards that includes length, diameter, colour, etc etc. none of the standards seem to be about taste though!
Well our potatoes tasted fabulous, and we're still alive and well after eating our 'uniquely' shaped space potatoes!
Cath, that's really tragic to hear Flemington markets turned up their nose at your tasty chemical free tomatoes just because they didn't fit the size criteria. It's encouraging to see through the comments on this post though, that by growing some of their own food, or being involved with food co-ops, there's a growing appreciation of the variety of shapes, shades and sizes that fruit and veg naturally come in.
In hope for a future of diverse and delicious food,
Ally and Rich :-)
So glad to hear that you are alive and well after eating your homegrown space potatoes. I also harvested some space potatoes in my backyard 10 minutes ago and I was wondering what to do with them. Then I've found your website! Thank you so much for sharing your story and I will be enjoying my space potatoes in a couple of hours.
JC
hahahaha those are hilarious! they look like demented puppies or something lol