Receta Cheesy Mashed Potatoes
by Christine Lamb

Many researchers believe that the

potato’s arrival in northern Europe spelled an end to famine there. Corn,

another American crop, played a similar but smaller role in southern Europe.

More than that, as the historian William H. McNeill has argued, the potato led

to empire, “By feeding rapidly growing populations, permitted a handful of

European nations to assert dominion over most of the world between 1750 and

1950.” The potato, in other words, fueled the rise of the West.

Just as important, the European and North

American adoption of the potato set the template for modern agriculture the so

called agro industrial complex. Not only did the Columbian Exchange carry the

potato across the Atlantic, it also brought the world’s first intensive

fertilizer, Peruvian guano. And when potatoes fell to the attack of another

import, the Colorado potato beetle, panicked farmers turned to the first

artificial pesticide, a form of arsenic. Competition to produce ever more

potent arsenic blends launched the modern pesticide industry. In the 1940s and

1950s, improved crops, high intensity fertilizers and chemical pesticides

created the Green Revolution, the explosion of agricultural productivity that

transformed farms from Illinois to Indonesia and set off a political argument

about the food supply that grows more intense by the day.

Need

a change, try these cheesy mashed potatoes.

Cheesy

Mashed Potatoes

Copyrighted

Ingredients:

large potatoes, peeled and chopped

Directions:

Cook

potatoes in salted water, until fork tender. Drain, and return to same pot. Add

butter, milk salt and pepper. Mash with a potato masher. Add milk, 1 tablespoon

at a time, until desired consistency. Stir in cheddar cheese. Enjoy!