¡We say potatoes, they say papas!

This entry goes out to all my garden club friends at O.W. HOLMES Elementary in Detroit! How´s the garden looking?

So, I hear you´re learning about potatoes today?! And you know, that´s perfect, because I happen to be surrounded by them much of the time whether it be at the market, my dinner table, or just walking down the street. Potatoes are a huge part of the culture here in Bolivia and we eat A LOT of them! Bolivia is the country in red and I´m living right now in a city called Cochabamba right in the middle of the country.

Did you know that there are more than thirty different kinds of potatoes grown here in Bolivia? They come in all different shapes and sizes as you can see below. We eat potatoes in soup, bread, as french fries, mashed, potatoes stuffed with meat and eggs, and the list goes on! There are even drinks here made out of potatoes! Potatoes are especially important to the native people of Bolivia - the Quechua and Aymara people. Just last week, we offered potatoes and other great things to the Panchamama, the spirit of the Earth for the Quechua people, in a ceremony called K´wa. K´wa is a monthly ceremony to give thanks for all the earth has offered this month.

In order to get some cool potato photos for you, I headed on a 20 minute walk to the Cancha - the largest market in all of South America! You can literally buy anything you can think of in the Cancha, so of course I stumbled across some potatoes for sale. They call them papas here! Here are some of the coolest potatoes and coolest papa saleswomen that I found. Do the papas look different to you than the ones that you´re growing in the Romanowski garden?

Here is a women selling her varieties including this awesome one with purple on the inside!

This family of potato salepeople in the Cancha told me that all the papas that they sell grow on the sides of the mountains of Cochambamba! Do you know where the ones you eat are from?

Alright, I better home now to eat some dinner and I promise you they´ll be some potatoes in the mix:) I hope you are enjoying the harvest in the garden for me. If you have any questions or comments for me, feel free to reply. I would love to hear from you! I miss you guys and hope you´re doing well. How are your potatoes coming along????