I Don’t Want Potatoes But What Do I Want?

“I can’t eat one more fecking potato,” I told my wife, and I meant it.

I was sick of potatoes.

If people are adamant about believing that creativity only happens in certain fields, they only have to look at what the Irish can do with potatoes.

In Ireland, the saying is not, “There are a thousand ways to skin a cat,” but “There are a thousand ways to eat a potato.”

Also, the capacity to withstand the culinary boredom of eating so many potatoes. For Christ’s sake!

So many ways to eat a potato and an entire nation to withstand it. Amazing!

Ireland was beautiful, and the trip was fascinating but extremely hard. Because of jet lag, my daughters slept very little. So we would pack these days with travel and sightseeing and come home, and neither would want to sleep. This meant I would walk them up and down lobbies until they finally clunk out for a few hours before we woke up and did it all over again.

My last day in Kilkenny was our tenth day of the trip, and we were working on getting very little sleep. I did feel good about my calves’ definition. Walking is wonderful cardio.

I was also hungry for something I wasn’t getting.

I didn’t know what I wanted; I just craved something to remind me of home.

“Okay, well, what do you want to do?” My wife asked.

“I don’t know. Something American.” The words came out without thinking.

I don’t think I knew what I was saying. I am not one for American exceptionalism. I’m not even sure I consider myself American. I’m in this weird limbo between being American and Colombian and not even thinking about my nationality when I’m going about my day.

“And what is that?” My wife was confused by my answer.

The truth is I didn’t know.

After all, “American cuisine” doesn’t call for anything specific. There is not one dish that comes to mind. Other national cuisines can be reduced to one thing:

“I want British food.”
“Let’s deep fry fish.”
“I want Portuguese.”
“Let’s boil fish.”
“I want Mexican.”
“Let’s have (fish) tacos.”

Okay. I know I am being reductionist. I’m just doing it for effect. Here. Let me fix it.

“I want British food.”
“Let’s deep fry fish, have gallons of beer, and let’s pretend we are better than the rest of the world even though we still have a monarchy.”

So, there!

But America has no identifiable cuisine.

I guess I can always find a McDonald’s, buy a Big Mac, a large McFlurry, and kick an old lady walking down the street.

Until one thing came to mind, and I told her slowly.

“I want barbecue.”

“Barbecue?”

She left the question hang in the air for a second.

“You want barbecue? In Ireland?”