This weekend, Mr. Sandwich and I made a trip to Salt Lake City and Idaho. Well, mostly Idaho. And considering that we flew to Utah on Saturday and came back on Monday, there really wasn’t that much of anywhere.
I can say, though, that Idaho is beautiful. We only saw the stretch along I-15 between Salt Lake City and Idaho Falls, but the mountains, valleys, and farmlands were breathtaking.
As we were driving north, we saw a billboard that said only www.buyhashbrowns.com
Then. as we approached the town of Blackfoot, we saw one of those brown highway signs that indicates a cultural or historical site. It said “Potato Museum, next exit.”
I turned to Mr. Sandwich and said, “If we have time on our way back, I totally want to stop there.”
This may seem odd, but I love potatoes. I love them so much that one year I gave them up for Lent. And it was the hardest Lenten sacrifice I ever made. I did really well right up until Thursday of Holy Week, when partway through dinner I said, “Wow. These potatoes are really good. These potatoes are. Oh. Potatoes.”
After leaving the highway, we followed additional signs and wound our way through town for a couple of miles. And then we found this:
Irresistible, no?
But perhaps you need more:
Lured in by the king of potatoes, we took the tour. It cost $2.50 each with the AAA discount, and the exhibits traced the origins and spread of potatoes (thank you, Columbian Exchange!) and presented an array of farming techniques and equipment.
On our way out, the woman at the desk said, “Oh, since you paid for the tour, you get these.” She handed us each a carton of freeze-dried Nonpareil Homestyle Hash Browns. And do you know what it says on the top of the carton?
www.buyhashbrowns.com