Blogging Musings

 

Wednesday 17 February 2021

So, it seems new and baby potatoes aren’t quite the same thing, internationally that is. A brief Google survey implies new potatoes, ALSO known as baby potatoes, can be:

• Literally new potatoes – the first, young potatoes of the season, harvested well before maturity while the plant’s leaves are still green instead of later in the season when the leaves turn yellow to brown, indicating fully matured underground tubers.
• A variety of potato specifically developed for yielding small, fully developed and mature potatoes to cater for a particular culinary application or need.
• Ironically, the last potatoes of the season, thereby differentiating it from the older potatoes harvested at the beginning of the season and still in storage.

And then we have fingerling potatoes ...

Therefore, for the benefit of my international readers, I shall stick to the generally accepted norm: “New Potatoes” it will be on this blog.

Fortunately, here in South Africa, we don’t have much use or truck with such deeply troubling metaphysical hubbub and lexicographical conundrums. We are too busy trying to survive virulent local Covid-19 strains, an economy in meltdown, apparently unchecked crime and a joyously inept government.

Here, baby potatoes are just that: immature, small tubers present at the time of harvesting. On the farm they are size classed into their own category, washed, dried and packed into 7Kg or 10Kg bags and sold as just that: Baby Potatoes (as opposed to the Small, Medium, Large and Chipper classes). Most local retailers repack the baby potatoes into 1Kg or 1.5Kg bags for the public’s convenience as a 7Kg bag will keep an average family of 4 – 5 busy for quite some time.

So, it seems size does matter. And names too.

PREVIOUS POSTS:

2021.02.08 A Verbosity Attack?