I've spent the last few days writing about mashups for a tech magazine. But, in doing so, it seems I missed a really big mash-up, Moscow Potato 2007.

You may remember that, two weeks back, I was celebrating my 7-pound potato harvest, part of a quixotic and sometimes frustrating effort to honor my children's Russian heritage with home-grown food.

This weekend, The International Herald Tribune, a paper I grew accustomed to reading during my expatriate days, had a lovely feature on Russia's first global potato congress, a three-day event called Moscow Potato 2007.

In composing the story, the writer pulled out all the bad potato puns he could manage. He called the attendees "the world's leading potato-heads" and the event itself "Spud-nik" (if you are missing the allusion there, check Wikipedia's entry on the Space Race.)

But, as he eventually comes around to noting, there are plenty of reasons to hold this conference in Russia.

The potato isn't native to Russia. It is indigenous to South America and was brought to Europe by explorers in the late 1500s. Peter the Great, the Russian tsar who was mad for all things European, brought them to Russia about 150 years later. Though rejected at first (the writer says Peter's subjects called them "Devil's apple"), they have become, in the words of the conference organizers, "Russia's second bread." The writer says that Russia eventually became the world's largest potato producer overtaken only recently by--get this--China.

While they still love their potatoes in soups and beet salads, Russians have learned to love the potato American-style, too, in potato chips and French fries. And the writer also mentions a Moscow food stop that I missed during my adoption journeys: Kroshka-Kartoshka ("Baby Potato"), a fast-food chain that sells baked potatoes stuffed Russian-style with marinated mushrooms, salmon or fried eggplant. That sounds worth the stop.

And so Moscow Potato 2007 became a chance to talk about all things potato in Russia, from the best varieties to plant to their market opportunities. (If you want to see what you missed by not being there, the conference Web site is here. There was even a field demonstration on planting and harvesting techniques.

Alas, Moscow Potato 2007 ended Friday. But maybe I can wangle an invitation--or at the very least some growing tips--from next year's organizers.