Potatophile

DEAR Home Lover: In response to a request published in your column last week, signed “Irish,” I am sending you one of my favorite potato recipes.[…]POTATOPHILE.

Germany lost the last war on potatoes. Are we going to try to win this one on the same faithless vegetable (asks a correspondent)? There are some signs that potatophiles expect us to.

A small blonde girl in a striped knit skirt visited the egg trailer exhibit on East Market Street in York and announced: “But I like potatoes better than eggs!” Startled representatives of the State Department of Agriculture which is sponsoring the exhibit tried to explain to the young potatophile the virtues of Pennsylvania Certified Eggs, but without success.

[…]is it necessary to distinguish between the potatophile’s expenditure[…]

The German people are fond of potato salad and this one, served hot, was new to me. I give it to you by permission of my dear friend and fellow potatophile, Hilde Grumer.

How idiotic it would be, if a Gastrologist, who classified all people according to the food they ate, were to define a grown man as a potatophile, or a herringophile, according to the favorite dish of one’s childhood, or youth.

With the help of a dedicated cadre of potatophile friends, I’ve recently been sampling old Solanum tuberosum in various forms of preparation, in restaurants of all kinds throughout Los Angeles and vicinity.

“The potato has been influential in making and breaking populations,” says Thomas Hughes, a native Philadelphian who has become perhaps the world’s reigning potatophile as founder and curator of the Potato Museum in Maransart, Belgium.