mash

Today, I am going on an adventure. My Aunt Vicki in Colten is participating in a potato-peeling session for families in need at her local church and has graciously invited me to attend, as well. I'm excited as all hell; I love peeling potatoes, I had no idea the pastime could be used to help people. The word "volunteering" evokes memories of my Girl Scout days, where we did things like write postcards to the homeless and sing songs to old, dying men in hospitals; they're wholesome activities, sure, but activities which nevertheless left my eight-year-old mind wandering, unable to shake the nagging feeling that there were other, more helpful things we could have been doing instead.

In my opinion, no table should be without a potato dish of some kind this week, mine certainly being no exception. To go along with the succulent roast we whipped up yesterday, we're going to make some holiday tubers, pinkbelly-style.

two large potatoes

two cloves of garlic

two tablespoons of olive oil

salt

pepper

T-Week has been chugging smoothly along course, just as anticipated. This recipe is my take on a classic mash-and-bake type of situation, and is NOT how my family made potatoes growing up. We're gonna figure it out.

Our two fresh specimens; they're here and ready to play. Oil them down, give them a moderate sprinkling of salt, and stab them several times with a fork. Get them into a 350° oven until tender, an hour at the least.

Once you've successfully made it to the safety of the peeling bowl, remove the skins and begin breaking down the spuds; they should mash easily between the tines of your fork. If they don't, put them back into the oven.

In a smaller bowl, press the garlic finely and combine with the olive oil, salt, and pepper. Microwave it for fourteen seconds if you're going for that Michelin-at-home aesthetic for the holidays this year. Imbibe the oil. It's not just garlic, it's an infusion.

Dump half of the concoction in and combine until smooth, tasting along the way for salinity. Something I probably should have warned you all about before: I tend to over-salt my food; this is because I am a terrible chef. When in doubt, let your taste buds guide you and tune me out entirely.

Once you have achieved the quintessential mash, lightly grease a baking dish and prepare the potato ball for transport. Scrape the bowl. No modicum left behind.

Here you can see the queer little design I tried ham-fisting into the top with a fork; I saw a lady do something similar to a pie crust on Instagram once and decided to really go for gold here. I ruined this almost immediately after creating it by brushing the remainder of the garlic oil over top and smearing everything together. So worth it.

She came out blonde, and that's just fine by me. These two potatoes will serve four people once or one person four times, that one person, of course, being me. I will try my best to express some amount of self-control.

And with that, I'm off. It's high-time I start pulling my weight around here on this garbage planet, and my first move is going to be doing the one useful thing I know how to do: making ordinary potatoes extraordinary. I'll talk to you beautiful bastards in the morning.