You Like Potato And I Like Po-tah-toh

Maybe I should have taken Gershwin's lyric literally and just called the whole thing off! This is another in my occasional very poor (I hope, but I wouldn't hang your hat on it!) emergency blip images!
As I've mentioned in several previous blips I am an almost complete horticultural (this is the second time I've used this word in two days!) ignoramus so when this purple flowering plant suddenly seemed to appear in our garden I had no idea what it was. Therefore, I consulted the interweb again and discovered this is actually a potato plant. 
Potatoes are in the Solanceae family, also know as the Nightshade family. The purple flowers that grow from potato plants are a good reminder that potatoes are cousins to eggplants, peppers and tomatoes.
As you probably know the part of the potato plant we're interested in eating grows beneath the surface - the spud, or tuber, that we dig up at the end of the plant's life cycle.
However, I must admit I didn't realise that the parts of the plant above the soil are a good reminder that another potato cousin is called Deadly Nightshade, aka Belladonna. Potato leaves, flowers and fruit (they can produce a berry that looks a bit like a green tomato) are in fact, poisonous. Not kill-you-instantly poisonous, but you certainly wouldn't feel great for a bit. Always good to know!
I'm a huge lover of the simple spud in its multitude of various forms - chipped, roasted, mashed, crushed, sautéed, hasselbacked, dauphinoise'd or as in today's image rosti'd (it was the only potato based product we had in the kitchen today)! I just thought I'd demonstrate the life cycle of a potato from beginning to end product in blip form! :-)

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