Food & Fun Recipes

Potato Soup

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Ingredients

• ¼ cup chopped onions
• 1 stalk celery, diced
• butter
• 5-6 potatoes, peeled and cubed.
• 1 cup water
• 1 cup broth
• 1 cup milk
• salt and pepper to taste

Instruction

1. Saute the onions and celery in butter.
2. Add the potatoes, 1 cup water and 1 cup broth.
3. Cook until potatoes are tender.
4. Add 1 cup milk and heat through.
5. Salt and paper to taste.

Potato-Kale Soup

Add 1 cup chopped kale with the milk. Substitute collard greens or other greens for the kale, or use a combination.

About Potato

• One acre of potatoes will produce 52,000 servings of French Fries.
• The word "spud" was a 14th Century term for a short knife or dagger and came to mean potato because of its use in digging holes for planting potatoes.
• Potato is the world's most widely grown tuber crop, and the fourth largest food crop in terms of fresh produce — after rice, wheat, and maize.
• The potato originated in the area of contemporary Peru.
• Potato was introduced to Europe probably in the 1570s, or approximately eighty years after the first voyage of Columbus in 1492, and subsequently by European mariners to territories and ports throughout the world as European colonization expanded in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
• Thousands of varieties of potatoes persist in the Andes, where over 100 varieties might be found in a single valley, and a dozen or more might be maintained by a single agricultural household.
• Once established in Europe, potato soon became an important food staple and field crop. Lack of genetic diversity, due to the fact that very few varieties were initially introduced, left the crop vulnerable to disease. In 1845, a fungal disease, Phytophthora infestans, also known as late blight, spread rapidly through the poorer communities of western Ireland, resulting in the Great Irish Famine.
• The potato is also strongly associated with Idaho, Maine, North Dakota, Prince Edward Island, Ireland, Jersey and Russia because of its large role in the agricultural economy and history of these regions.
• In recent decades, the greatest expansion of potato has been in Asia, where as of 2007 approximately 80 percent of the world potato crop is grown.
• Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union, China has become the world's largest potato producer, followed by India.
• The potato is a cool season crop and can be grown in Oklahoma gardens early in the spring or late in the fall.

Brainstorming / Webbing Activity

While the soup is cooking, students will draw word webs using potato shapes instead of circles. In each potato shape, students will list foods they eat that are made from potatoes.

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