Sioux City Journal from Sioux City, Iowa • 20

4 The Sioux City Sunday Journal, November 10, 1974 ThP Versatile Potato. Delicious and Nutritious Idaho A Potato i Paradise Worcestershire package. Spread over turkey. and mustard Fix f' 5 tor Bake at 350 degrees What would a Thanksgiving turkey be without mashed potatoes? Or a steak without a baked potato? Or a hamburger without french fries? Or ham without scalloped potatoes? Just about every favorite ail-American meal includes the basic potato in one form or anther- minutes. 5 to 6 servings.

TURKEY BEINEDICT 2 tablespoons butter 2 tablespoons flour 2 tablespoons French's Worcestershire sauce 2 tablespoons French's prepared yellow mustard 1 cup milk Va cup shredded process American or cheddar cheese 6 English muffins, split, toasted and buttered 12 slices Canadian bacon 12 small slices cooked turkey 2 to 3 tomatoes, sliced Though potatoes appear to oe a sturdy vegetable, there are a few things to remember to get the most for your potato dollar. The potato is a living organism very much like a human being. It breathes in oxygen and gives off carbon dioxide. If a potato is held un- sauce. Either dish, accompanied by a green bean salad, relishes, light fruit dessert and glasses of milk, provides a balanced meal containing servings from each of the basic four food, groups needed daily to stay healthy.

POTATO TOPPED TURKEY PIE 2 cups finely diced cooked turkey 1 cup chopped celery cup whole berry cranberry sauce Vt cup soft bread crumbs Vi cup mayonnaise 2 eggs, slightly beaten 1 tablespoon French's instant minced onion 1 teaspoon salt 1 envelope (5-servings) French's instant mashed potato granules Combine all ingredients except potatoes. Spoon into well-greased 9-inch pie pan. Prepare mashed potatoes following directions on jjT'K. vy i 7 Melt butter in a saucepan; add flour, Worcestershire sauce, mustard, milk and cneese. our constantly umu cheese melts and mixture -thickens.

Top each muffin half i. vy-fA i 'I '1 1 with bacon, turkey, and tomato. Bake at 450 degrees for about 5 minutes. Spoon a little sauce over each. 6 servings.

der water for a sufficient period of time it will suffocate or "drown" much like a person would. Cooling a potato slows down its metabolism and it becomes very inactive and breathes quite slowly. Heating a potato produces the opposite results. If potatoes are too hot, they become "sick" and the internal part will turn grey to blackish in color. The flesh of the potato is more sensitive than most imagine.

If dropped from a height of more than six inches, the potato will get a black and blue mark within about 48 hours. Potatoes should be handled just as carefully as a raw egg. Don't store those potatoes under the sink or in any other warm place. Ideally, potatoes should be stored at about 45 degrees with nearly 100 per cent humidity. Of course, that high humidity cannot be maintained in most homes, but do store the potatoes in a cool place or even in the refrigerator.

Potatoes should be baked not steamed to provide the best flavor and for that reason they should never be baked in foil. Peel potatoes thinly to save as many of the nutrients as possible. For the cook in a hurry, there is a wide variety of instant potato products on the market. With Thanksgiving just around the corner, the R. T.

French Co. test kitchens in Rochester, N.Y., have developed two delicious and economical meals to prepare with turkey leftovers. Turkeys are on the plentiful list and bargain priced during this entertaining season. With these two recipes, investing in a big turkey will pay off in delicious dividends. Potato topped turkey pie is a combination of bits and pieces of meat, cranberry sauce and eggs.

Topped with fluffy instant mashed potatoes, it's an attractive and hearty meal-in-one. Turkey slices are teamed with Canadian bacon to make tasty turkey Benedict. The hot open sandwiches are capped with a savory cheese sauce sparked with prepared yellow Midwesterners are used to seeing corn inch its way up a conveyor to a wagon at this time of the year, but it's potatoes that are the big crop on the plains of Idaho. Idaho is the leading state in production of this main staple in most Americans' diets. It is estimated Idaho will harvest 80 million hundred-pound bags from about 337,000 acres.

1 V. '11 I'll rli villi it I I I A I The only thing instant about instant potato products is the ease with which today's busy homemaker can set piping hot au gratin, scalloped or mashed potatoes on the table. Decades were needed to perfect the process which makes these convenience foods so commonplace on household shelves and the early attempts were by no means an instant success. The first homemakers to use dehydrated potatoes probably were the Indians of pre-Spanish Peru. After the potatoes had been frozen overnight, water was squeezed out by treading the potatoes with bare feet for four or five consecutive days.

Remains were left to dry in the sun and stored. theory may have been correct, but it was up to modern technology to make the results pleasing to the palate. instant mashed potatoes were born in battle during World War II, but the crude dehydration process transformed the spuds into a soggy mush, perferably only to the hated K-ration. 'This GI version was uncooked, greatly disliked and created a reputation for the instant mashed potato that almost prevented the produce from getting off the ground in this century after the war. Yet from a product that couldn't be given away in the 1940s has come a multimillion dollar business with retail sales running in excess of $75 million.

fact, more than 60 per cent of the Idaho fall potato crop is expected to be used for processing purposes. To achieve this wide acceptance, it took a decade and a half of technological progress to make the "soggy mush" of World War II into the fluffy dish that is a boon to today's busy homemakers. While the Nazis were still pounding London, the British government asked two English firms, Reckitt and Colman, and Chivers, to experiment with dehydrated vegetables. In 1943, Theodore Rendle, a British engineer, and a Dr. Burton of Cambridge University went to work.

.1 With the cooperation of the- United States and British governments, they developed machinery and principles which still form the basis of all dehydrated potatoes. Subsequently, the R. T. French Reckitt and Colman's associate company in America, was given exclusive franchise to market instant potatoes in the United States. I -The product was put on the market in selected cities in 1946, but" it met a lot of resistance.

Millions of ex-GIs would have nothing to do with it. French's scientists went back to their laboratories finding ways to improve the product. By 1951, French's decided the operation was ready for its own plant. The selection of the potato best adaptable to dehydration dictated the location of this new installation. Years of testing indicated that the Russet Burbank potato of Idaho filled the bill and French's plant was built in Shelley, Idaho, nine miles south of Idaho Falls in the heart of potato country.

Idaho's magnificent lava soil plus abundant sunshine and earth that is rich in the elements the potato needs are ideal. Temperature is neither too hot nor too cold during the growing season. Irrigation assures the scientific control of water to the crop that natural rainfall does not. The Russet Burbank is sensitive to water and its shape can be controlled through soil moisture. All potato fields are irrigated and a new computer service in Idaho assures even greater yields.

Although expensive ($20 per acre), the service predicts in advance when irrigation will be necessary. Today the French plant at Shelley is capable of holding the equivalent of a billion pounds of raw potatoes. Raising potatoes for ordinary consumption and growing them for instant potatoes are two different things according to Chuck Schroeder, French's chief agronomist. "In shopping for raw potatoes, women bank heavily, almost exclusively, on appearance," he explained. "As processors, we are free to concentrate on all the important elements such as taste, flavor and nutritional content." Potato harvest time in Shelley is an exciting experience for the entire community.

Women leave their homes to help in the vast fields. Even some schools dismiss classes during harvest so1 youngsters may also do their share. One Saturday is set aside for "Spud Days" with hundreds of people coming from miles around to taste the freshly harvested Idaho Russet Burbank baked to perfection and drizzled with melted butter. s.The nickname "spud" for potatoes, incidentally, probably (Editor's Note: Journal Women's Staff Writer Dianne Rose visited the Idaho Falls, Idaho, area this fall for potato harvest and a tour of the R. T.

French Co. potato processing plant in Shelley, Idaho. This is a report of the complex process necessary to make instant potatoes.) Idaho potato growers would be happy if they never saw a misshapen Russet Burbank like this one. With irrigation and improved agricultural practices, fields are yielding very few of these odd-shaped spuds. J.

A 4 -ft 1 itt v' A iff Ic. Potato topped turkey pie Is a hearty meal with the added benefit of being fast and easy to prepare using instant mashed potatoes. It will make a perfect after Thanksgiving meal or, with turkey plentiful and economical now, why not try one In the near future? Our People Make Us Number One JEWELERS More than 60' per cent of Idaho's potato crop is used for processing purposes. In the R.T. French Co.

plant at. Shelley, Idaho, laborers first sort the harvest vegetable to remove "number one" potatoes which are the right size and shape for table stock and then the diseased and damaged potatoes not suitable for making instant products. derived from an ancient tool called a "spuddle." It was a short, spadelike instrument with narrow blade originally used to remove potatoes from the ground. W. 1 'f A A i tA A mmm Now there are massive, self-propelled potato harvesting machines gleaning the fields which appear somewhat similar to the huge harvesters that gather Iowa's corn.

As harvested, the natural potato contains nearly 80 per cent water. The trick in producing instant potatoes is to remove this water without breaking or bruising the delicate cells. The cell wall of the potato is semipermeable. It allows water ta pass through to the starch particles within. When the potato is ctfoked, these particles mix with their companion minerals and proteins to form a gelatinous mass.

The dehydrating process then turns this mass into pre-cooked dCy starch. Ideally, each cell shrinks and breaks off into an individual entity which, under a microscope, looks like a dried pea of hourglass-sand size. When the homemaker pours thousands of these tiny "peas" or cells-into water, the starch within instantly reverts back to a gelatinous mass and joins up with its fellow cells resulting in fluffy mashed potatoes. However, the dry product will produce the desired result only if the cell walls are not broken. Once the cell wall is broken and the starch solution freed, a gummy disappointment will result.

The process used to make a pleasing product currently involves 21 separate and intricate steps. After potatoes are selected, they are washed thoroughly and examined so that all diseased or undesirable potatoes are removed. They are then peeled either mechanically or chemically. In home preparation, a surprising percentage of each pound of potatoes is lost in peeling. Included in this loss are substantial amounts of the potato's mineral and vitamin content.

During processing, potatoes are immersed in a hot liquid for about three minutes. This loosens the skin of the potato so that it can be washed off by high pressure water sprays. Discarded skins are used as cattle feed. After skins are removed, the potatoes are inspected for bruises and other defects which are removed by hand labor. They next are sliced lengthwise into uniform thickness so the potatoes will all cook in approxmately the same time.

First potatoes are cooked in a hot water bath at 165 degrees and then steam cooked at 203 degrees. Cooked potatoes are then mixed with seed or previously dried potato powder to form a wet mash which can easily be handled and dried in conventional driers. When the instant mashed potatoes are completed and ready for packaging, the moisture content has been reduced from 78 to 6 per cent. The lucky woman who can whip up her potatoes for the evening meal in less than a minute might take those 60 seconds to ponder Die years of research, technology, machinery and dedication which have produced the modern miracle of instant potato products. his mushy potato mixture Is on Its way to be Diamondhood is togetherness uniquely expressed in diamonds.

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B. Tailored bridal set, .1 diamonds, I I karat jfold, S')25, t. Fashion rin, 6 diamonds, I I karat (told, )M). D. 21 diamonds, 1 carat total weight', I I karat gold, 1 7 jewels, E.

Pendant, diamonds, I genuine sapphire, 11 karat gold, $175. V. Earrings, 16 diamonds, 2 genuine sapphires, I i karat gold, pair $195. G. Men's ring, diamond solitaire, 11 karat gold, S725.

H. Men's ring, diamonds, 11 karat gold, $75. Layaway now for Christmas Elegant gift wrap at no extra charge jks Revolving haw mtum h.irjje HjiikAineruaril Master t.harge American llnpress l)niers (luh (arte Islam he byaway dehydrated for the manufacture of Instant mashed potatoes. The most Important aspect Is careful handling to insure that delicate individual cells are not damaged. It has taken decades to perfect the process which provides instant potatoes for busy homemakers.

'If 5th Pierce Shop Monday Fridays 'til 9 P.M. I'riie mac moinlinn (neiK I ilijnuiml einhi lluMhitiom.