POTATOES

Potatoes will keep you alive in a famine & will store beautifully underground until the ground begins to freeze.You can dig a few up for dinner & always have a wonderfully fresh potato on your plate.They keep for months & months in the cellar as long as you leave the dirt on them which preserves them & store them in a cardboard box, or a burlap bag or a wooden basket or crate. Keep them in a dark place and away from apples.A box of apples in the same room emits a gas into the atmosphere which will start the breakdown of the potatoes.Today is February 20th & I just had a lovely plate of mashed potatoes Ifreshly peeled from my fall diggings.And they're still good.They're starting to grow eyes.I cut them with a small cube of potato underneath each one & put them into paperbags for drying. When spring comes around I'll have my potato seeds for this coming year's batch.One of my favorite toys as a child was Mr & Mrs Potato Head.My mother gave us a large potato to play with and my brothers & I proceeded to stab the potato with a little hat and eyes & nose, mouth & ears & whatever other the game came with.You can even make puppet heads with potatoes.Shove a stick in the bottom, a handkerchief around the neck and you have an instant puppet! You can also make a printing press out of potatoes!! Cut one in quarters and carve a letter into each quarter.Dip it in a pan of easter egg dye & whallah! Or carve a picture into it as your brand or a tatoo! Peel a potato & use the same peeler to peel off potato chips.Deep fry and you have another fun thing to do with a kid!