Botany of Desire

Today I came across a quote from Michael Pollan, my narrator-extraordinaire on morning walks to work.

"Sooner or later your fingers close on that one moist-cold spud that the spade has accidentally sliced clean through, shining wetly white and giving off the most unearthly of earthly aromas. It's the smell of fresh soil in the spring, but fresh soil somehow distilled or improved upon, as if that wild, primordial scene has been refined and bottled: eau de pomme de terre. You can smell the cold inhuman earth in it, but there's the cozy kitchen to, for the smell of potatoes is, at least by now, to us, the smell of comfort itself, a smell as blankly welcoming as spud flesh, a whiteness that takes up memories and sentiments as easily as flavors. To smell a raw potato is to stand on the very threshold of the domestic and the wild. (241)"

— Michael Pollan (The Botany of Desire)

In developing this post, I learned that PBS has an ongoing series inspired by the book.  While it is not currently on air (at least in my area), you can watch archived episodes on pbs.org!

More to come on potatoes and the miracle which is a spud...