Potatoes were first grown by indigenous communities in the Andean Mountains of South America, now known as southern Peru and northwest Bolivia. Spanish conquistadors and sailors brought them to Europe in the 1500s, and from there, European traders started to spread the crop worldwide. Potatoes are now one of the most known vegetables in the world.
In fact, I am willing to bet that you have potatoes in your kitchen.
Potato pieces hitting hot oil on your pan sizzle in your kitchen, while an earthy yet neutral smell travels through the room. You’re hungry and poor, but with potatoes in your kitchen, tonight, food is not a worry. Thousands of recipes require potatoes. But because of your financial struggles and because potatoes are among the most budget-friendly vegetables, on average costing around $0.67 per pound.
Let’s say that is all you have. So you decide to make french fries. You’re careful when frying the potatoes.After all, a simple thing like its crunch separates one plate from another.
You follow a simple recipe:
- Choose the right potato.
- Cut the potato in linear form many times.
- Soak the pieces in cold water for 15-30 minutes and pull them back out.
- Dry them completely.
- Cook them in oil for five minutes, then again for two to four minutes.
While, for you, this may be something you might be able to only imagine, for many this is reality.
From the age of two until the age of nine, I lived in Mexico, Hidalgo, in a poor household with a single mother and many people to feed. Potatoes were often the thing we ate.
There are over 4,000 types of potatoes. The most known are called Yukon Gold, russet, and fingerling. The complexity of potatoes begins at its growth. Potatoes do not come from what is considered as true seeds, but instead from the remains of past potatoes that have at least one “eye.” These are known as “seed potatoes.” This means that from one potato, you can grow more potatoes, creating a cycle and therefore allowing people to eat in times of need.
I remember watching a family member pick potatoes from a patch of dirt once. That same day, we ate potatoes as our meal. While it was something simple, a plate of one vegetable is better than no plate at all. The high nutritional value of vitamins, minerals, and carbohydrates allowed me to regain my energy and quickly go back to playing with my cousins. Because of potatoes, I never went to bed hungry, and that simple vegetable gave my mom more time to gain money.
I rarely ate fast food as a kid and when I did, it often involved me hiding so that those in my household wouldn’t start to crave what my mother could rarely afford. Whenever my mom and I went out, we would pass by a burger place, and every time I would smell the french fries cooking, while I’d crave them, I never asked my mom to buy me some, because I knew that the answer would be, “sorry honey, I can’t afford it.” Although I was unable to get those french fries at that time, she would always end up saying that she’d buy them for me whenever she got money. A few years later, she fulfilled that promise, but this time in the U.S.
Not everything was bad though. There was an instance where my mom woke me and my older sister up at around two in the morning. She had just come back from a date, and she had Chinese food for us. At that time all I could think about was trying food I had never tried before. But now that I’m older, my mom told me that sometimes she would go on dates specifically so she could bring us new food to try. While back then, I wasn’t old enough to appreciate her efforts in feeding us, now I am.
To this day, the hot oil dripping from the recently made potatoes, the crispy sound of their rough skin, and the over-saltiness allow me to remember and imagine a piece of my childhood. Every bite takes me back to the past: a rainy day with wet green grass touching my feet as I run down a small hill, into my grandma’s house. The sound of my cousins behind me laughing loudly, and finally my grandma yelling at us to calm down while she serves us a plate of food.
For me, potatoes were never a simple vegetable, but rather a taste of hope that one day things would get better for me and my family. Potatoes override other vegetables in affordability, versatility, and nutritional value. But on a personal level, potatoes remind me of my past, make me aware of my present, and give me excitement for what the future holds. While for many, eating a simple vegetable may not seem like an accomplishment, for me, they hold the memories of what I once thought as a simple dream.
