Tea at Trianon: Celebrate the Apples of the Earth

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Wednesday, March 18, 2020

Celebrate the Apples of the Earth

From The Record-Eagle:

The Irish may have laid claim to the spud, but potatoes originated in the New World. Peruvians were the first to discover the satisfying flavor and versatility of potatoes and to cultivate them from wild, marble-sized spuds. Peruvians prized potatoes for almost two millennia before the Spanish exported them to the Old World.

It wasn’t love at first sight for Europeans and potatoes … they were much maligned as a poisonous nightshade. With the help of potato champions like botanist Antoine-Augustin Parmentier, who in 1785 persuaded Louis XVI, King of France, to encourage cultivation of them, potatoes began to infiltrate European kitchens.

Parmentier played a trick on villagers: He planted 100 acres outside Paris and had troops guard the field. Parmentier allowed curiosity about this “valuable” plant to grow until finally he sent the guards off duty. The local farmers sneaked into the field, stole potatoes and planted them on their own farms.

The type of spud and where and how it grows matters. Present-day potatoes, mixed with the diverse, wild and ancient South American gene pool, come in a luxury of hues, textures, flavors and shapes. Potato-smart cooks choose local over industrial spuds. Explore farmer’s markets for organically grown blue-fleshed Purple Peruvian and All Blue, rosy-fleshed Red Thumb, the dense yellow-fleshed Yellow Finn and Yukon Gold and the sweet fingerlings like the popular Russian Banana and pink-skinned French Fingerling. (Read more.)