Tuberific

While at the local portuguese depaneur yesterday I got the craving for sweet potato. With thoughts of sweet potatos dancing around my head it made me think of other potatoes so I got Yukon gold potatos and there was another type there called Batato which was apparently sweeter than the potato but much starchier so I got all them and some potato salad and prepared a starch fest. Why kind of startled me is that Kate was in for this. Health. It actually was a great meal. Whipped, mashed and with lots of brown sugar...

This tuber fest led me to do some research into tubers. Apparently in 1904 when tuberculosis came about the American scientist who discoverd it, named Hands Foxwell, named the disease after the tuber plants (potato, yam, sweet potato, cassava, manioc etc..) because it was thought that the disease was transmitted through them, and in the dirt I guess. This is what inevitably led to the Potato Famine in Ireland in 1907. The Irish had a week crop of everything that year except potatoes but people were so affraid to eat them because of fear of getting Tuberculosis that they rather starve to death instead.