Produce Spotlight: All-Blue Potatoes

 Have you heard about All Blue Potatoes?  Have you wondered what all the hype was about?

These lovely gems are not the most exciting item fresh from the earth.  In fact, they tend to be so dirt colored that we sift through several times to make sure we didn't miss any of their hidden beauty.

Once scrubbed, you might begin to see their attraction.  The beautiful purple color is different from anything I've ever seen in my other potatoes!

After slicing, I'm always fascinated.  Look at the gorgeous marbling!

Some color will be lost after cooking.  Boiling tends to make them white all through, but when we grill them, they tend to retain a portion of their exotic coloring.

The Old Farmer's Almanac covered the origin of all blue potatoes in this interesting blog post.

Grilled Veggies

Grilling zucchini is probably our favorite way to consume this prolific vegetable.  If you've never grilled veggies before, it's easy to prepare and can be placed on the grill with your meat.

Start by washing your veggies.  Slice off the ends and any bad spots.  Peel and remove the seeds if desired.

Slice into 1/4"-1/2" slices for softer vegetables (summer squash, for example).  

Lay out a sheet of foil.  Coat the foil with oil (I use olive oil and a brush; you can also use cooking spray).  Place the zucchini in a single layer half the size of the foil and leave room around the edges to fold them up at the end.  Add salt and pepper or your favorite herbs and spices.  Add a second layer if desired.  I usually stop at two layers so the center is done when the edges are.  Coat with olive oil again.

Fold up the center edges twice, then fold both ends twice.  Folding twice helps keep in the oil and juices.  If you're worried about over-packing the packet, wrap in another sheet of foil.  Leaking oil can cause unexpected flare-ups on the grill!

Harder vegetables, such as potatoes, should be sliced more thinly to allow them to cook in the same amount of time.  I use a mandolin or a sharp knife.  Some people mix veggies in their packets, but I tend to find the zucchini limp and the potatoes raw, so I keep each one to its own foil packet.

Grill for 7 minutes on either side over direct heat.  Be careful when opening the foil packets: there will be steam and hot juices.

Enjoy!

Latest Harvest

All-Blue potatoes

Candy onions

Kennebec

Tree onion bulbils

First Harvests

There are many onions still to harvest...

...but we are making headway on the potatoes.  While I know others keep their potatoes in the ground until they are ready to consume them (or at least until fall), we discovered last year that, once the grasshoppers devour the leaves, the stems quickly rot and disappear, and soon after follow our buried potatoes.  A portion of our crop had already rotted after only an extra two weeks in the ground, so once the stem is bare, we harvest!

First, we harvested Red Norland potatoes.  Several days later, we followed with our Yukon Gold harvest.  With 165+ pounds harvested and an entire bed to go,  it's anyone's guess as to how much is left.  There will be several varieties, red and white skinned, waiting like buried treasure.

 97 pounds of onions have been pulled.  Some could have waited, but when our time is needed on so many different fronts, it is not practical to pick and choose out of a row.  Once most of the row is laying down, we harvest.  I'd refer to wait until the leaves brown, but it is not possible for us to check every day, as no one lives on Purgatory Ranch just yet.

Of the onions, we have pulled all the Red Candy, Red Burgundy, and Sweet Granex.  All that remains is the Candy.  There are PLENTY of those, and still growing!

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