Greetings all, here is an interesting story from six Peruvian villages in the Andes (to my understanding, my French is limited to impressing my Karwar-side relatives) who have growing 1000 varieties of potatoes that provide all round nutrition. I know Goa's folklore has stories of "enginer de patates" (story of a high-borough Goan rascal who borrowed money from the Portuguese to grow potatoes, then he make enjoy with the money, so he took them a bag of dud potatoes saying the crop had gone bad) but this is real, and may provide some ideas in dealing with price increases in food. This is in relation to food shortages all over and the good ole 'botato' is a nice alternative. Apparently, the folks in these villages eat meat just once a week or less.
Its also interesting that in these varieties of potatoes, each type can be used for one kind of dish only...example, the dark odd shaped one for soup. Here is the link to the 10 minute interview (click on the audio link) http://www.radio-canada.ca/radio/christiane/modele-document.asp?docnumero=57157&numero=1880 The story is in a Canadian-French magazine called l'Actuality, not available in London UK unfortunately. In closing, the many folks I speak to in Goa all seem to agree food prices are up up and up but none of them complain....their attitude is so what, we'll pay more. I wonder what they do for a living!
