Wednesday Knights Blog

I was close.   Looks like the Incans invented the Pringles.

Besides their skills at building, the Incas were masters of agriculture, terracing their rugged mountains and breeding wild plants into strains which would grow in the dry, high altitudes. One of the results of this was the potato. Just think, without the Incas we would have no French-fries, baked potatoes, potato salad, potato chips, and probably much less cholesterol.

To insure a constant supply of food to all of their subjects, the Incas built thousands of storage sites and developed methods to preserve food. Freeze-drying today is accomplished with equipment developed for the space program, but the Incas achieved the same result by utilizing the harsh weather of the Andes. Potatoes were left outside at night to freeze. In the daytime, the hot sun evaporated the moisture, resulting in a freeze-dried potato pulp called chuño. The same process was used to preserve beef. They called the dried beef charqui, a Quechua word we still use today, only we spell it “jerky.”