Wednesday, April 11, 2007

Chinese chips

My Easter was rather a cooking marathon whose highlights were a flaming baked alaska, a simnel cake and a rhubarb meringue pie. The rhubarb crop in my garden is prolific, rather more so than the asparagus whose harvest has so far totalled two spears. McDonald's potato supplier, Simplot, has spent the last twenty years improving its potato farms in China, mainly in Inner Mongolia which is on the same latitude as Idaho. When they arrived in China in 1988, most farms used a horse and plough and Simplot persuaded them to join together to justify the investment in tractors and fertiliser machinery. Ten years ago they dealt with 1000 suppliers, now they have just 100 but these 100 produce one billion fries per year: not a bad yield.

4 Comments:

Blogger Mutterings and Meanderings said...

Surely you don't want to McDonaldise your aparagus plot?

7:41 pm  
Blogger Eurodog said...

Let's sort out the human rights issues before we tackle the chips. Or is it the other way round?

8:08 am  
Blogger Welshcakes Limoncello said...

It sounds as though you had a great culinary Easter! I love rhubarb and we can get it here, though at different seasons. Asparagus is growing everywhere.
I didn't know that's where McDonald's get their spuds.

7:30 pm  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Oh Winchester ! You were going so well until you mentioned McDonald's !

http://www.supersizeme.com/

Mind you, your cooking sounds rather scrummy - so we shall be round for supper very soon...

Didn't do any cooking myself, but my mother did rustle up some fantastic 'chocolate chip Welsh cakes'. Yummy!

10:48 am  

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