Monday, November 5, 2007

Purple Potato Eater


We were meandering through the produce section of the world market, when I came across some purple potatoes. The outsides didn't look very purple-y, but I bought four of them, hoping the inside would be purple.

I read that purple potatoes were originally from Peru and were reserved for the Inca kings and that yes they are purple inside.

I decided to bake them in the microwave...poked each one with a fork a few times (squirting bits of purple potato juice onto my white kitchen curtains) and baked them one at a time for about 6 minutes (it's an old microwave).

I sliced open a baked potato and was excited to see the beautiful royal purple inside.

The kids were excited to see the potatoes and to taste them...well one of them was excited about tasting it. My son has HATED potatoes every since I first started giving him bits of mashed potato as a baby. A gag reflex inducing food for the poor lad. As he has aged, he has decided he does like potato chips and french fries (though more than 1/2 the time at McDonalds he only eats a few and the rest of us fight over who gets the rest) and once he ate some scalloped potatoes that were swimming in a pool of cheese and butter and enjoyed those. But, for the most part he HATES potatoes and usually has to drown them in ketchup to finish the few bits on his plate, his mean mother forces him to eat.


How did they taste? We all agreed they tasted pretty much like....a regular potato. My dd said "It tasted perfectly normal. Only thing I liked about it was the color. The color was un-potato like." The boy said something like "yeah that's what I think." I am not a Food Connoisseur by any stretch of the imagination - so if there was any subtle taste difference, it was lost on me.

The purple potato is apparently high in antioxidants - so it has "brains" as well as "beauty".

I will definitely buy these again - they were kind of expensive for everyday potatoes (about $2.50 for the 4 little spuds we bought) - but I'd like to try making purple mashed potatoes or something "fancier" with them.


1 comments:

Kristy said...

I love the idea of this blog!