Potato for kids

Speaking Vegetables

Since 1999  books on Fruits and Vegetables for kids with Healthy Recipes  were published and distributed in USA, Canada, England, South Africa, Russia, Holland and India. The well-deserved popularity of this unique approach to healthy diet is growing ...

Implement healthy ideas into everyday's life of your family and particularly your children. Start with eye-catching color - a wise range of red, green, yellow bright colours on your kid's plate. Make special shapes, combined with funny combinations - no child will push it away!

Always keep fruit bowl in the middle of your table. Appetizing fresh delicious fruits and vegetables will become part of your daily menu.

Potato Salad with Nuts

- 8-10 potatoes
- 2 spring onions
- a glass of walnut kernels
- 2-4 cloves garlic
- 1 tablespoon cider vinegar
- dill or parsley
- salt and pepper to taste

Boil the potato in its skin, peel, and cut into cubes. Crush the walnuts with the salt and pepper and add the cider vinegar and the chopped spring onion. Mix with the diced potato and sprinkle the herbs over the top.

Young Antoine would go off outside town for whole days at a time, to learn about different plants. He brought home huge piles of leaves and roots, but his mother threw out everything her son collected without any discussion. She sent her son off to be a chemist's apprentice, to make him get rid of his silly ideas as quickly as possible.

The old chemist happily told Antoine all he knew about the health-giving qualities of plants, but the curious boy wanted to know more.

‘Why do people use so few plants to heal and feed themselves? Nature offers us thousands to choose from!'

‘Knowledge about edible and medicinal plants was passed on to us from our ancestors; we are no longer experimenting with them,' the chemist would say, to cut such conversations short.

Antoine could not forget his ideas, even when he finished studying and set up his own chemist. He wanted to find a plant which people could use as a substitute for bread during years when the harvest was poor. However, when he cooked soup from the roots of bluebells, his guests laughingly refused the miraculous dish. The second time, Antoine dried the underground stems of water lilies and ground them into flour. But no one would even try the bread baked from this flour.

Antoine's search was interrupted by the war. France was fighting against Germany, and after one battle, Antoine ended up in captivity. When the captives were presented with a pot of steaming vegetables, many of them eyed it with suspicion. But Antoine was immediately aware of the nutritional value of the strange vegetable with the funny name ‘kartoffel'. He had finally found what he was looking for.

When he was released, Antoine was given a small amount of money to buy medicine to heal his wounds. With this money, he bought a bag of potatoes and happily set off home. In France, Antoine furiously got to work planting the new vegetable, learning about its properties and informing people in every part of the country about it. Everyone laughed at the eccentric chemist and his ‘earth apples'.

When he examined the potato juice, Antoine discovered that it helped people with stomach pains, and was also great for lowering blood sugar. He started to use it to heal people, and many of them soon felt much better. However, people still did not trust the root ‘apples' which had been dug up from the ground. The chemist turned to the Queen for help, sending her a gift of a blossoming potato bush, and promising to feed the entire nation quickly and simply.

‘What dear little flowers,' the Queen said. ‘They remind me of a lilac twilight with snow-white clouds. I will pin them in my hair. And I will order my people to give Antoine Parmentier a field. Let him plant his earth apples there.'

‘‘How can I explain to people that potatoes can feed them just as well as bread?’ Antoine asked himself over and over again, as he worked in his potato field. ‘

The forbidden fruit is the sweetest, Antoine. Make people think my potato tubers are forbidden,’ a potato suddenly said.

‘That’s a superb idea,’ Antoine said joyfully, and he ...

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Read next story on potato: 'GOOD POTATO' >>

... This was the fragment from children's story 'The Potato Chemist'. The complete story 'The Potato Chemist ' with creative tasks & activities, other stories on potatoes 'The Life Saver', 'The Good Potato', 'How Potatoes came to live in Russia' you will find in the book 'WORLD OF VEGETABLES'.

IN "THE WORLD OF VEGETABLES" each story for kids on healthy food is delivered in an entertaining form and narrates about a particular vegetable, its importance in daily diet, its values. Each story concludes with recipies for healthy snacks. More about this book for kids about healthy food >>

Book for kids The World of Vegetables is part II of series of books on Healthy food for kids. Read book I - World of Fruits for kids >>