The Senile Potato Invasion.

Hello Potato Eaters,

(Of course hello to the ones not eating potatoes also, even if you should eat potatoes, or maybe not if you are allergic or something.)

Last Thursday at dinner Big Gunnar had one of his moments, and afterwards there was a lot of extra potatoes for whoever wanted this, he had been reading about gene-modified food, (probably as a result from the size fluctuations of cherries), and then he obviously got one for dinner, and afterwards we all received a long and very accurate lesson in potatoes, he had even a name on all of this which comes further down on the page I hope.

I will of course try to summarize it for you good people, because to write the complete tale would be impossible, at least for me at my age.

Just to finish the age thing, this is an automobile made in 1923.

It is a Triumph All weather tourer, and it was most modern when it came, you can really see that it was prepared for all kinds of weather, I think they only made 13 or something of it, it even had a 3 speed gear box! Then to write all about the potato tale from Big Gunnar is not possible, one must choose more and more clever what to use ones respected time on, but it is, and was, a really nice automobile, but to know just how far it would drive today is impossible to guess.

Anyway, a totally decent and probably not senile potato.

The original name is "Patata", the Spanish name for it, the Spaniards brought it back from their rather rude and indecent visit to Peru and the Inca Empire in approximately the 1570`s , what the Incas called the potato I do not know.

Machu Picchu.

Sort of the home of the Patata, or Poteto, or really what the Incas called it would probably be the the most correct.

A Spanish conquistador and infamous potato collector.

This is Francisco Pizarro, he is one of the most infamous potato collectors, he and the Spaniards must obviously have been great potato lovers, because they showed no mercy during their indecent and rude visit in Peru when they, among other items, collected the potato.

If the potato came along voluntary in the 1500`s I do not know, but at this stage they were quite normal, and what Big Gunnar describes as just normal travelling potatoes, this was followed by decades of normal potato expansion, many countries started eating and growing potatoes, some even decorated themselves with potato accessories.

Marie Antoinette.

Marie Antoinette did according to Big Gunnar once use the potato flower as a headdress. She was the Queen of France for a period back in the 1790`s, she also unfortunately lost her head in the revolution, but I do not think this had anything to do with the potato flower, but maybe because of the actual potato, or rather the lack of potatoes for the people living in France at that time, and her not seeing that she should share, among other food, the potato.

Anyway,
a potato flower.

You can understand Marie Antoinette using them in her hair, they are indeed beautiful.

This was just a very small part of the history of the potato (at least compared to when Big Gunnar told it), now back to the actual potato and what bothered Big Gunnar.

"They have tampered with my potato." Big Gunnar said at dinner. Of course this is not anything anyone wants to hear at any retirement home, or really anywhere at all I think, at any time, so everybody listened really respectfully to Big Gunnars following "Tale of the tampered potato". It turned out that he had learned that the potatoes was target for gene modifications all the time, and he felt that the information regarding what was really done towards them was very lacking (Big Gunnar normally comes to this conclusion regarding most information regarding all and everything), but in the case regarding the potatoes he was afraid that by tampering to much with them, the humans could end up with potatoes that had forgotten their original heritage, and lost their inborn qualities, that we would end up with a more fragile and less healthy potato, an invasion of senile potatoes almost. "We will end up with senile potatoes", was what he concluded, "if they do this the wrong way", by "they" he among others, had found one specific consortium he felt took their work not serious enough.

Big Gunnar and his suspected tampered potato.

Big Gunnar of course always looks decent and classy, also when he shows of any suspicious potatoes, he claimed that both the size, and consistence was almost proof enough of the tampering, that it might had received some quality changes, most likely on a molecular level.

Big Gunnar said he would write to "The international Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium" to see if he could get any decent answers to what had happened to the potatoes over the last years, how and what they really had done towards it, and what their plan really was.

The international Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium.

(This is of course not the actual Potato Genome Sequencing Consortium, but their logo.)

I feel sort of sorry for these people, because they do not really know what they are up against, and just how accurate they must answer Big Gunnar before he is satisfied with their answers, and I am pretty sure the work they do are really meant as a help so more people can have potatoes, and maybe so no such incidents as the one where Francisco Pizzaro brutally stole the potato, and potato flower wearing Marie Antoinette lost her head happens again. Everybody really should have potatoes if they want to.

Have some potatoes, they are excellent with fish, and send a small thought to the journey of the potato.
They are still sort of travelling any way you choose to look at it.

I wish you all a calm, normal and decent week.
F.W.G