Funny holidays - International Boiling Potato Day

South America is considered the birthplace of colorful sweet potatoes It was there, on the mountain slopes of the Andes, that sweet potatoes grow, which the ancient Incas ate from around the 12th century This vegetable came to Europe thanks to Christopher Columbus At first, court ladies decorated their hats and dresses with flowers, but after a while in Holland, Belgium, England and Italy they began to eat the root vegetable in a heat-treated form In honor of one of the methods of preparing the vegetable, an unusual holiday was invented - April 26 is International Boiling Potato Day Priest VA Preobrazhensky, in his treatise “Description of the Tver Province in Agricultural Relation” published in 1854, lists in detail the dishes that peasants ate at that time In the work prepared by the Scientific Committee of the Ministry of State Property of the Gold Medal, there are the following lines: “Boiled potatoes in water and served hot make up the daily breakfast: they eat it with just bread and salt” However, this was not always the case Historians claim that the tubers of the overseas plant appeared in Rus' thanks to Peter I At first, potatoes were grown for medicinal purposes, making medicine out of them, but later the “devil’s apple” began to be eaten The peasants were very conservative and preferred other root vegetables - the usual beets, turnips and carrots The common people did not know how to cook potatoes correctly and what could be eaten in them Therefore, at first it was met with hostility due to poisoning by green tops and numerous deaths from eating raw, unripe tubers At the beginning of the 18th century A cholera epidemic broke out in Rus' She was associated with the “devil’s apple” and Peter’s innovations However, in the middle of the 19th century the vegetable, which they learned to grow and cook, became part of the peasant diet for a long time In Belarus this happened much earlier In this country, potatoes are practically a state symbol It is used to make potato pancakes, dumplings, komoviki and other national dishes Historical notes mention that when in 1654-1667, during the war with the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, the Russian army entered the territory of present-day Belarus, the soldiers were amazed at what they saw Residents ate boiled root vegetables, which they called “bulba” Therefore, the Uniate heretics who ate the “devil’s apple” began to be called Bulbash During the Great Patriotic War, thanks to potatoes, soldiers at the front and rear workers did not die of hunger The high-calorie, tasty and filling root vegetable became a temporary substitute for bread, which was sorely in short supply The chemical composition of potato pulp, which includes fats, carbohydrates and proteins, starch, vitamins and amino acids, suggests that it is beneficial for the human body The average Russian eats about 55 kg of vegetables per year To prepare the simplest dish, boiled potatoes, you don’t need a lot of time, spices or expensive seasonings It is a tasty and nutritious meal in itself Therefore, on April 26, in Russia, as in other countries of the world, International Boiling Potato Day is widely celebrated