Potatoes

Why has Ireland always been associated with potatoes?

Because the Great Famine of 1845 (ended 1852) was caused by a blight that turned a majority of the potato crops in Ireland into putrid waste in the ground. Before the Famine, potatoes were a staple crop that feed Ireland's poor as well as their livestock. When the blight decimated the potato crops, 1 million people died of famine and another 1 million immigrated out of Ireland.

Even though other parts of the world, especially Europe, were affected by the blight, no country experienced the devestation that Ireland did.

It is sad to think that the main food product associated with Ireland comes not from its abundance of it, but rather the dramatic dearth of it.

Digging through Kate's garden it is hard to imagine that there ever was a shortage of the pudgy, pinkish-brown tubers. They literally multiply in the ground (You can plant one and, like any other root, it spreads. As it spreads, one tuber becomes many.) Kneeling in the garden this afternoon, fingers shifting through the dirt mounds that had been built to protect the potatoes tubers from the cool atmoshphere, I was able to fill a medium-sized basket with the little suckers in less than five minutes.

Many of the potatoes here don't look like the ones you can find in the supermarkets back home. Every once in a while my hands grasped the brown, rounded shape of a Russet Potato that is familiar to me because it has been mass produced in the States. But most of the potatoes I found were small and pinkish. And looked more like huge, chubby fingers than potatoes. In fact, sometimes tubers grew out of the tops of other tubers forming three- or four- fingered hands.

Putting aside my reservations on eating hand-like objects, I carefully washed the potatoes and cut out any spoiled or rotted parts. Then I boiled them for over half and hour. When they were done, the fork slid into them with little resistance. I mashed them up with a bit of milk and butter for lunch.

Let me tell you, Helen (one of the neighbors) was right. I don't know if it was the working for my supper or the history of the potato that made me so appreciative or what, but there is nothing quite like a Irish potato.