Vegetables and How I Cook Them: Potatoes

The very first year of farming our running joke was, “Hey, this looks like something you could buy at a store!” We were surprised that we could produce something that could have been validated by the outside authority of a store—something professional, when we didn’t feel like we were. I never thought much about it at the time—the power over our food that we’ve ceded to outside sources. It exemplifies the disconnection so many of us feel with our food.

Over time that thought (hoping our food would live up to what we saw at the grocery) transitioned to comparing the quality of what I can grow to what is on offer in the aisles. I saw the difference in what came from my garden over what was available on the shelves. I write “difference” deliberately. Sometimes it was better. Sometimes it was worse. Mostly it was truly just different.