I know it's not my imagination, but perhaps some of you food experts can explain why it seems that potatoes have become very different in the last couple of years. Many potatoes seem to take forever to cook when boiled, and many, if not all, Idaho baking potatoes seem more crystalline than mealy when baked. Are we importing them from China along with everything else????

It seems like the potatoes are smaller than they used to be. Maybe picking the potatoes too soon changes the flavor of them. I do notice that the bigger potatoes are much better than the small white potatoes. Remember when people would say that something is "small potatoes". That was never good.

I've been buying organic potatoes lately and am happy with them. They are smaller than "traditional" potatoes, but since they aren't grown with pesticides and whatnot you can leave the skins on and get all the nutrients.
(Potatoes are on the list of five things you should buy organic, along with milk, ketchup, peanut butter, and apples, btw.)

I think Elexina is on to something here. Maybe all the pesticides are changing the consistency. It certainly makes sense.

I'll have to check it out on my next shopping trip.

Thank you for that link, Elexina, it was very interesting.
Another reason to buy organic, is that the fruits and vegetables really do taste better. The NYT article says that we need not be so concerned about pesticide residue on foods with peel. That may be so, but when I can, I buy organic bananas, and the differencee in taste is amazing.

Over here (Britain not France!) a problem is that growers have to comply with the needs of the big supermarkets. These demand fruit and vegetables of uniform and consistent size, colour and form. What's more, the growers are expected to produce these in vast quantities and all cropping predictably.The last is because the farmer needs to be able to harvest whole fields on the same day or night, with the whole crop being in exactly the same state of readiness. Then packers and freezers get a wholly identical load.

What's missing is flavour and/or texture.The varieties that are grown to meet these criteria do not have to taste better than other varieties. They may well taste a lot worse. The other varieties that do taste better are not suited to the industry so are not grown.The bigger the scale and the fewer the big buyers the fewer the varieties grown. The others are suited to small scale production such as 'organic' or market garden production. Years ago they might have been grown on a bigger scale but have been superseded by later innovations.

A result has been that some varieties fetch a big premium. The Jersey potato, a small early variety,fetches a high price.Some of the older varieties of potato are also dearer than the modern hybrids.In apples the 'golden delicious' and its red relatives have been ubiquitous, if tasteless. The Cox's orange pippin, on the other hand, is never consistent in shape, crops less well and less predictably to date, but is far superior. It fetches more money in the supermarkets, when they have it, but will never be grown in vast quantities.

It may be that even the mass volume products of years back have been changed to inferior varieties, for commercial reasons.

The French, almost needless to say, are not so easy to please. Be it supermarket or market, the varieties on offer are very numerous and varied, and more often traditional and old than new

quote:

Over here (Britain not France!) a problem is that growers have to comply with the needs of the big supermarkets. These demand fruit and vegetables of uniform and consistent size, colour and form. What's more, the growers are expected to produce these in vast quantities and all cropping predictably.

That happens here as well, but we do have some farmers (even big corporations, now) who insist on growing organic, and their customers insist that their foods taste better, even if they aren't predictable and uniform.
Polyface Farm comes to mind with regard to eggs, chicken, pork and beef, but from my own experiences buying and growing organic, I know I would much rather have some oddly shaped excellent tasting potaoes than those than line up all in a row.

Thanks to all of you for confirming my suspicions. As usual, the consumer must adjust to the wishes of the giant corporations, or else! I guess I'll have to spend the additional money to buy the organic stuff from now on.

We have seen a revival of growing your own and of allotments, so people can grow older or better varieties. (Allotments date from the C19. They are small fields which are divided into individual plots and run by associations of the users. They are usually found in towns.The idea was that people living in terraced houses, with only a tiny yard, could grow their own vegetables and flowers)

We've a long way to go to match the French. In France the culture,the tradition, has long been to have your garden devoted to vegetables and herbs, not flowers and shrubs as in England.It seems odd to us, but middle class people, hardly 'sons of the soil', do this. You'll often see luxurious ground floor apartments in Antibes where the wealthy retired have nothing but vegetables in their gardens!

Can go too far in this pursuit of 'real life'.Townies come to live in this village. They imagine that country people live like the ones in old fiction, and all wear smocks, tug their forelock to the farmers, and have kitchen ranges.Pursuing this rural idyll, one family got themselves some hens and a cockerel.That lasted about a month, before their townie neighbours complained about the crowing!

Some very old village people do keep hens here, but not in the back garden!

(The villagers are now eagerly waiting for that family to tug the forelock and call our son 'Master', just to "fit in" )