Wonderful history lesson on potatoes, @gooddream! I really enjoyed reading this. Interestingly enough. I heard today that we are having a potato shortage in the U.S. I think the spring and summer were really rough with wildly varying amounts of rain that affected both planting and harvesting.
I was so interested to read in your post about the notion that potatoes have not always been around. At least not for all populations. And now I need to go look up the potato famine!