ANCHORAGE, Alaska (KTUU) – The Alaska Native Medical Center, in Anchorage, offers a menu of traditional foods in its hospital. But some of those foods can be hard to get. With the Tlingit and Haida potato they have the beginning of a solution.
Grown in Southeast, Alaska for generations, it is believed that the potato arrived here through trade. Likely coming from South America. For three seasons now, ANMC has grown the potatoes at the University of Alaska Experimental Farm.
This years harvest was 175 pounds. Not enough to make the potato a regular item in the hospital’s Traditional Foods Program. But enough to save some seed potatoes for planting next years crop and the rest for a special meal either on Indigenous People’s Day or Thanksgiving. The goal to eventually raise enough potatoes to be a regular item on the menu.
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