Mashed Potatoes

My mom's mashed potatoes were like glue; paste for construction paper cutouts. A consistency just barely appealing enough to fool one's mind into mistaking it for pudding; the trickery so powerful that one could forget they were eating an entree's side dish and instead thought they were eating dessert. Mother's magic. Aside from this minor setback (Elmer's glue as a side dish), the potatoes were still potatoes, meaning they tasted like potatoes-- earthy and starchy.

For the longest time, I didn't question the confusing potato product. My family rarely ate at many places where mashed potatoes would be an overwhelming, necessary option. In a household where Cheerios were, albeit briefly, considered "junk food" due to the microscopic amount of sugar listed in its nutrition facts, a dish so intent on being liberally fattened up with gravy, butter, cream or any combination therein, was myth in my family's kitchen.

We trust our mothers because they taught us the concept of trust and they made us, through all the attempted teenage lies, understand it. I trusted my mom's culinary abilities. She cooked from scratch and with intense love. The only foreseeable issue was that she improvised. Her improvisation stemmed from a desire for low-fat, healthy food. Substitutions were made all over the place. Chocolate cake made with apricot jam. She was stagnantly opposed to frying; every fat was used in moderation.

For some reason she never used meat thermometers. Often, the meat she worked so hard on preparing, would be dry. This was because my parents were, and still are, strong advocates of the counterproductive method of cutting open meat to see its doneness, the method that no professional, no matter what level of inebriation or apathy, would ever recommend. It's a sin comparable to the burger K.O. of a firm, machismo spatula press that releases the steaming screams of the meat juice that so badly wanted to ride a human's intestinal tract. I'm pretty positive my parents were once victims of the viral, spatula press concept.

I developed a passion for cooking watching my mom so delicately prepare meals. I learned how to boil pasta. I learned how to brown garlic (a hue likely too brown for most people's taste). I learned how to bake. Stick a toothpick in to see if it's done. With a TV in the kitchen, I had access to the Food Network which helped me immerse myself, for those saturated moments, in a world of food totality.

Though I enjoyed my newfound food knowledge, I had one selfish goal in mind: to learn how to make mashed potatoes the real way, in other words, better than my mom's. The possibility of being better at something than my mom, let alone an adult was a thrilling pubescent prospect.

My mom bought, and fell into a state of infatuation with, a hand blender. Salad dressing and banana milkshakes. It was becoming clear, to my mom, that the gadget had many preparatory uses. With this enlightenment came the inadvertent defiling of mashed potatoes. She boiled the potatoes, a good first step. Then, she poured too much 2% milk in, a fairly forgivable step. The last step is almost too horrifying to mention. My mom massacred the potatoes, commanding the blender with her strong right hand, until what was left resembled pale, impotent porridge.

I had to put an end to the monstrosity. For Thanksgiving one year, I found a recipe for roasted garlic mashed potatoes. I found a potato masher hidden deep in one of the scary drawers of kitchen miscellany. I washed the potatoes, cut them into small pieces, placed them into a pot and covered the chunks with cold water. I rubbed a bulbous head of garlic with olive oil, wrapped it in aluminum foil, and placed the silvery package into the hot oven.

After paying close attention, adding a mother-unapproved plop of butter, squeezing the fragrant, whiskey colored garlic cloves out of their paper cocoons to their pillowy demise, tossing in seasonings and gently mixing the potatoes together, I found myself staring at a heap of textured potato mass that resembled the impossibly, and curiously, delicious mashed potatoes from Boston Market that we used to eat at my grandmother's house. I had found a hobby.

The guests attached to the perimeter of the mahogany dining room table that night thought the mashed potatoes were delicious. My mom liked them. I think she understood my subtle, passive-aggressive suggestion that she should prepare her mashed potatoes the proper way. My mom may not have known how to make appealing mashed potatoes but, to be honest, mom, I would eat those potatoes every second if I knew they were made by you. If you had any butter. No, a stick. Just saying.