Shame on Me!

So there I was with my recipe list and a plan. I had two plans, actually: the snow day plan and the no-such-luck plan. I had all my ingredients ready to roll--or slice and dice and sauté, I should say--when it occurred to me that ...this is painful to admit...wait for it....please don't judge me....I have never made mashed potatoes. I am 44 years old, a self-proclaimed foodie and good cook, AND I claim to be my mother's daughter, but I have never made mashed potatoes. What a fraud! I should just go to my freezer and throw the keilbasa out! Never having made mashed potatoes also means...gosh, this isn't getting any easier...that I, Miss Crate and Barrel, Miss Kitchen-Gadgets-Change-my-Life, did not have a potato masher. In my ginormous utensil crock. I have a nearly a dozen spatulas, spoons, a rolling pin, a meat mallet, but no masher.

Sure, I could have cheated and run back into the store for a bag or box of instant mashed potatoes, right? Or picked some up from the take out section.They are NOT the star of the show, or the canvas for my mother's gravy or Thanksgiving turkey, after all. Well, I didn't. I needed to make good. I faced my inadequacy and decided to conquer it. I drove right to the store and bought a potato masher. That's right. It's in my crock as I write.  I'm testing it tonight.

PS It's me again! That would be Miss Potato McMasher, Fluffy McSpuds  to you. I AM my mother's daughter...it's like I'd been making them my whole life. The recipe was coded in my DNA somehow; making them was instinctive.

 Oh, yeah! ...How do you like me now?!! Time to make the shepherd's pie...