“Po-tay-toes! Boil ’em, mash ’em, stick ’em in a stew,” says the lovable Samwise Gamgee in “Lord of the Rings.” He’s not wrong: Potatoes do well in all those cases, as one of the most versatile, ...
Book Four of Tolkien’s The Two Towers finds Samwise Gamgee trying to persuade a recalcitrant Gollum to dig for their dinner. Potatoes, the hobbit enthuses, are ‘rare good ballast for an empty belly’, ...