It’s really easy. For starters, you just plain *make* mashed potatoes. How do you make mashed potatoes? I mean how do *you* make mashed potatoes? I usually start by boiling some potatoes in my three quart Revere Ware pan or a bigger one if I need to cook more taters. Up until fairly recently, I peeled the potatoes but after a niece and a couple of daughters said that they were happy eating unpeeled potatoes, I now only peel off anything oogly and remove any eyes or bad spots. But y’all can certainly peel your potatoes however you want to.

I boil my potatoes until they are soft and then I drain them and let them sit back in the cooking pan for a bit with whatever I have hanging around. ALWAYS butter but also yogurt (PLAIN, NOT vanilla), cream cheese, sour cream and milk are all candidates. A little horseradish might be good if your intended audience is game but maybe better to serve that on the side, if at all. Let the whole mess all sit in the pan a bit and then mash it all up like crazy. Lumps? Do your best but who the heck cares! Dump it into a buttered casserole dish, sprinkle some paprika over the top, cover it up and stash it into the refrigerator. When you are ready to use it, bake it at 350 until it’s done. Done? Done is when it is heated through and you are ready to serve dinner! If it’s “done” before the rest pf of (pf?) dinner is ready, just turn the oven down to warm/hold and let it sit there.

This is the kind of strategy I use to get through holiday dinners without stress, even though the ones we have here at the Landfill are not all that stressful, since it is usually only us and the beach urchins these days. Our CFam relatives are dealing with their own extended families and my branch of the Fin Fam is small and (very sadly) not united for the time being. It’s all okay. I miss the friendly relatives of the holiday dinners of my childhood but I am happy to hang out at home with people I love. It is a precious day off for me if nothing else.

This morning, I spent the early dark hours hanging around as my Mouse gathered herself to get to work by 7:00 AM. She didn’t need me to hang around for that but I wanted to. Lizard Breath took the day off and after the GG cooked us a wee brek, we all took a hike at the geology center and then meandered back eastward for lunch at The Session Room. Home for all of us with Lizard returning to Detroit and then a porterized dinner at the Oscar Tango, where Liz (famous OT waitress/manager) situated us in one of the coveted window booths. Tomorrow is the annual Umich/Ohio State game which means that downtown will be crazy tonight and tomorrow. We expect our home team (blue) to lose. Alas.

P. S. After I wrote this, somebody on facebook posted a meme about how much *vodka* to put into mashed potatoes. Yeep. Just no…

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