The Mighty Potato...

The mighty potato!

Saviour of the Irish...

Scourge of Atkins-diet followers everywhere...

We absolutely love to grow potatoes!

Each year we attempt to grow a huge amount of potatoes.

The funny thing is...you never know how many potatoes you are growing...until you dig them up!

Each year we come up with some brilliant idea of how to grow MORE potatoes.

This year, we tried to grow the plants inside buckets with the bottoms cut out.

The first few plants I unearthed...I wasn't convinced it was a good method.

For some reason, the other half of the potato bed proved this method an unusual success!

We planted a dozen potato plants...and the above picture shows our white fleshed potato yield.

The ones in the bucket are for storing.

The ones on the straw are tubers that I scratched or nicked with my fingers or the trowel.

I was told that any disturbed flesh on the potato will rot very quickly.

I had no idea how quickly.

That is, until some of our red skinned potatoes went bad in 2 days where I had been careless.

Careless?  Maybe.  Excited to dig up super sized tubers?  Definitely!

There were more than a few that were the size of my head!!!

So what do you do when you scratch a freshly dug potato?

Make a loaded baked potato for dinner!

Gently scrub the skins of the potato (fresh taters have very delicate and papery skin)

Clean, soak and chop a handful freshly picked cooked broccoli.

Chop a few pieces of cooked bacon.

Shred marble cheddar cheese from Wilton Cheese.

Pierce potato all over and wrap in foil.

Bake for 1 hr approx.

Open foil and pinch sides of potato to open.

Add Stirling butter and top with broccoli, bacon, cheddar and s & p to taste.

Over the past few years of blogging, I have discussed potatoes before.

If you would like more potato-ey goodness:

Here I discuss cooking potatoes 

(features recipes for Potato and Wild Leek Soup, Leftover Mashed Potato Pancakes, Hashbrowns)

Here I illustrate the recipe for Shepard's Pie


Here is our recipe for Venison Steak and Veggie Pie with Pastry topping


Here is my original potato post complete with recipe for roasted red potatoes as a side dish.