Wandering the Web

I love the Internet. You never know what hidden gems you will find. I find myself reading Paul Krugman's blog and -- blam! -- I'm off looking at an FAO site and studying the potato! Ah, the joys of the Web. So many fascinating things:

Solanaceae - or "nightshade"- family of flowering plants, and shares the genus Solanum with at least 1,000 other species, including tomato and eggplant.

Who needs a hobby when you can get lost wandering among the myriad of pages on the web?

And you discover such wonderfully seemingly useless and obscure facts as:

Potato peel and other "zero value" wastes from potato processing are rich in starch that can be liquefied and fermented to produce fuel-grade ethanol. A study in Canada's potato-growing province of New Brunswick estimated that 44,000 tonnes of processing waste could produce 4 to 5 million litres of ethanol.

And this delightful tidbit:

Despite the potato's popularity, however, annual consumption in Canada declined from 89 kg per person in 1994 to around 85 kg a decade later.

Since the early 1990s, Canadian potato production has expanded to meet international demand for frozen potato products. In 2004, almost two million tonnes of raw potatoes - or 37 percent of the total harvest - were needed to meet export demand. Most exports are in the form of frozen french fries, destined mainly for US markets.