That’s pretty scary, i’m happy to know that your wife is healthier now.
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Looking for help in making fruit leathers. As sweet treats go, this is about as healthy as i can find, but mine always seem to come out kind of “shattered.” I get the right texture, but it has pulled apart in a map of the Danish coastline. I use silicone sheets, tried oiling them, adjust thickness and viscosity. Any help out there?
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Encouraging:
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The idea that you cannot get adequate protein or calories from a vegan diet is ridiculous. Look up the nutrient content of most grains, the biggest problem is that there are tons of calories. Now, if you eliminate grains, legumes, pseudocereals and potatoes from your diet, i could see it getting to be a problem, but, i mean, seriously? (And i am sure someone will point out a high protein vegan friendly item i missed.)
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Right? And USians especially tend to think we need waaay more protein than we actually do.
Btw, what’s a pseudocereal?
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Amaranth, quinoa, (another something i can’t call to mind right now.) All grains are grasses by definition. These guys are actually related to spinach and beets. And have edible leaves as well. But as a “grain,” the seeds have complete protiens and are really good as well.
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Yeah, I’ve always looked at people who don’t think you can’t get enough protein from a vegan diet and think “where do you think the animals you’re eating got all that protein?”
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I know, right? Technically, cows are just highly concentrated grass.
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Behold the scrawny vegan!
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If you hit your daily calorie goal by eating only potatoes
Asks Ireland, circa 1840s…
Chris Voigt knows this because for 60 days in 2010 he ate nothing but potatoes. And a little oil. And one time some pickle juice.
Pickle juice?
A century later the population had doubled to 2 million, and by 1845 it had soared to 8.5 million people—more than 90 percent of whom were utterly dependent on the potato
Nice use of the passive voice there… 
Let’s not forget that this was not a choice of Irish peasants, who had been systematically denied access to good farmland. It was not a “victory” of the potato, it was brutal imperial policy that made that state of affairs the norm…
where the government continued to export grain, meat, and even potatoes from Ireland despite the raging famine.
And who was the government? Again, imperialism is absolutely dismissed as being responsible for the deaths of a million and the emigration that meant that the population of Ireland never recovered pre-famine levels… Monocultures are bad across the board, for the health of the land and people…
But potatoes are yummy and healthy, no doubt, but glossing over imperial policies that led to mass death is not a great look.
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We must also consider Peru, where potatoes originate from. It is a staple food of the native population there but their diet is varied. As you point out, the overreliance on potatoes is untenable in the long run but for the Irish that was not by choice.
I have thought of growing my own potatoes, and possibly having a few different types (and also grow other veggies) but i would need to build some raised beds. Need to see how i want to go about it.
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Exactly! The article sort of reference two highly non-scientific “experiments” (one carried out by a guy who seemed to work for a potato lobby?) of living on nothing but potatoes, but we all know that’s problematic. And it highlights weight loss as a key indicator of improving health, but we all know it’s more complicated than that. Shedding weight can be great, but not always.
I do think it’s true we probably eat more frozen/fried potatoes than we should and baked or mashed would be healthier for us, but it’s not an everything food - nothing is!
Oh certainly someone covered potatoes over in the gardening thread by now?
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I grow them in large pots, to avoid rodents and such. It works pretty well, allowing for less actual space, the yield is higher/ sq ft.
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I’ve brought this up before (in one thread or another) but I wonder what South Asian & Habesha cuisines were like before the 1500s. It didn’t really occur to me until relatively recently that the chilis, tomatoes & potatoes wouldn’t have been in those places until the Columbian Exchange brought them there. (I am guessing that they [& samosas] made their way to Ethiopia via Indian Ocean trade, but it’s also around the same time that there were Portuguese Jesuits in [then] Abyssinia)
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Or Italian food, for that matter… European cuisine was most certainly also transformed by the Columbian exchange!
Good question, tho! An old regular here who was a historian used to talk about his class on the history of food, and I’m guessing he’d know some books on the topic… I don’t know any books on the topic sadly…
Here is a thread on the Ask a historian subreddit, but there isn’t too much there (one person replies in the assumption the asker meant Native Americans)…
You might find something recipes from Max Miller’s channel, as he does some ancient recipes (primarily Roman/Greek stuff but not just):
Or Sohla’s show with History Channel, Ancient Recipes (I don’t know if this will link to the list, if not, just go to the History channel’s youtube and search for the show):
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I’ve talked about it as well, specifically Italian food, but broadly speaking i find it very fascinating to think about regional cuisines and what they must’ve been like before the European colonization of the Americas.
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If you have some ground, dig a trench, toss in some spuds, then semi-ignore. Some water now and then might be good. I use the forgotten ones, the ones that have struck out on their own in the back of the “onions and potatoes” cupboard.
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Although it is true that potatoes are really good as a staple crop, they have some pretty notable deficiencies that would make a potato-and-nothing-else diet a la The Martian not a terribly good idea for long term survival. Before we get to the vulnerabilities of a monocrop diet. That said, they are remarkably good as a centerpiece of a varied diet.
https://fdc.nal.usda.gov/fdc-app.html#/food-details/170027/nutrients
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