prairie point

We were at the Downtown Cafe across the street from the courthouse in Weatherford recently and Tricia and I ordered burgers and fries. Actually I just ordered a burger and she got the burger with fries. But she was not eating them so I reached over to her plate and started picking them up.

The interesting thing about these fries were that they were kind of soft and soggy, not crisp and golden the way they usually are. And then I remembered that these were the kind of fries that my mother used to make at home. She would make them by frying them in shortening in a large iron skillet. For some reason these were called “irish potatoes,” pronounced as if it were spelled “arish.” Everyone in my Dad’s family used this term, but I have never heard anyone else use it. They never said “french fries.”

Actually it was pretty rare for mother to make potatoes this way. More commonly we had mashed potatoes, or potatoes cut up and roasted with beef, or potato salad. My own favorite was new potatoes in a cream sauce. I can’t ever remember having baked potatoes at home. But none of these kind of potatoes were ever called “irish” potatoes, if I remember correctly.

Crispy french fries were something I mainly remember from drugstore counters and drive-ins. This makes me sound very old but there were not really many of the big fast-food chains around in my youth. I think I was a college freshman before I ever saw a McDonalds. I never was all that big a fan of friench fries but they seemed like the natural accompaniment to hamburgers, of which I am very fond. It took me many years to realize that I could order the burger without the fries. And it is much healthier that way. Not just less fat either. Now it seems there is another ingredient in fried potatoes that is suspected of causing cancer. In California they are even thinking of requiring a warning label on them.