POTATOES, POTATOES, POTATOES…

One of my greatest loves in life that I can 100% credit to my gorgeous Irish-born dad is potatoes.

It is a true love in every sense. I think about them constantly, I get extremely excited when I see them and even after a big feast I can still dreamily salivate over them.

This comes as no surprise as we were affectionately bred on them. It was a running joke in our household that poor mum always had to prepare 2 meals at dinner time. The first was for us girls and the second was for my dad. His version, required no garlic or “funny stuff” and always a side of potatoes. Boiled, mashed, baked, chipped. I loved it. What more could you want as a child than a bowl of Spaghetti Bolognese with a side of home made hand cut chips!

I’ve recently come across potato heaven at the Marrickville Organic Food and Farmers Markets held every Sunday. There is a stall run by Nashdale Fruit Co who are farmers from Orange.

They have a section dedicated to potatoes, first tick. Each basket of joy is clearly labelled with correct names and uses, second tick. Every week the varieties switch up depending on what they have grown, third tick.

So yesterday I went in with a clear mindset that I was going to be getting another couple of kilos of their extremely sweet, sun-kissed yellow Nicola’s. I initially gasped when they weren’t on display. However something even more fabulous took their place. JACQUELINE’S! Just when I thought I had tried all possible varieties here in Australia out pops one more. Luckily for me the average punter had side-stepped these little gems and purchased the kipfler and sebago’s, which left me a plentiful basket to pick from. So I bought up big.

I couldn’t wait to get home. My boyfriend still looks at me a little strange when I excitedly go into great detail about a new food discovery, he listened patiently as I blabbered …”So I bought some thumb sized baby ones for boiling to toss through butter and organic sea salt, some medium ones for scrubbing and scoring for roasting and some large ones to make for easy peeling when I want to make mash”…

Another reason why I love this stall at the markets is that they have set up a separate table dedicated to the Marrickville Backyard Gardens group. Basically it is there for anybody to sell on any excess fruit and veg they may have from their backyard. What a great community incentive! Bundles of fragrant curry leaves were on display yesterday – another household staple of ours.

Can’t wait to get cooking!

Tracey

PS – the raw milk ice cream turned out sensational with no disagreements to my intolerance too. What an accomplishment!