Potatoes
Ms. Frady's second grade class planted potatoes in the Spring - and guess what!! They grew a bunch of them- some teeny tiny ones, small ones, medium and large!!!!
Potatoes seem like an ordinary vegetable- best as french fries with a little salt, excellent as a baked potato or even mashed for Thanksgiving dinner. Prepare to be amazed!!
In your grocery store you might have red, white and yellow potatoes ... did you know there are over 5,000 kinds of potato.
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| Many kinds of potatoes. |
The first Spaniards in the region - the band led by Francisco Pizarro, who landed
in 1532 - noticed Indians eating these strange, round objects and emulated them,
often reluctantly.*
Potatoes spread throughout Europe - "By the end of the 18th century, potatoes had become ... a staple. Roughly 40% of the Irish ate no solid food other than potatoes."
Then, in 1845 the Great Potato Famine began - a potato blight and Colorado Beetle destroyed the potato crop with huge implications for the history of the United States of America. Want to know more?
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*Read more: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history-archaeology/How-the-Potato-Changed-the-World.html#ixzz24y0caYyR |
