• The Irish cuisine takes its influence from the crops grown and animals farmed in its temperate climate.
• Since the Middle Ages, Ireland's cuisine was dominated by the country's abundance of cattle, which provided adequate meat supplies to the wealthier Irish classes.
• Meanwhile, Ireland's poor lived off of the dairy products and offal gleaned from these animals, as well as rural barley and oats crops.

    In the latter half of the 1700s, the potato was introduced as a crop in Ireland, transported there via South America. Soon, this starchy vegetable grew from a simple garden food to the country's most relied-upon staple crop.

    This heavy dependence on potatoes led to disaster during the country's first major famine in 1739, when freezing temperatures wiped out potato crops nationwide.

     The Great Irish Famine of 1845 to 1849 was even more devastating to the population, caused by a crop disease that spread throughout the country's potato fields.

    Thus millions emigrated from Ireland and bought their basic, no nonsense cooking attitudes to America! LUCKY US (no pun intended)!

www.ghfoodcenter.com