The Old Potato Masher

I bought a new potato masher the other day.

I didn’t want to buy it, but last Thanksgiving I massacred a pot of potatoes—and I don’t use the word massacre lightly. They were sticky, gluey, awful.

I hadn’t made mashed potatoes in a few years. Prior to last year I’d spent three Thanksgivings not in charge of cooking (weird, eh?). One year I was in Virginia with my friend Violeta, the other two years were at my brother’s house where he took care of the mashed potatoes. But last year was at the Treehouse, as this year will be, and I was in charge of the kitchen for Thanksgiving again—except for the incredibly yummy and beautifully colored roasted root vegetables that my mother always makes.

Rather than do the potatoes as I usually do—by instinct, not following a recipe—I decided to make the Buttermilk Mashed Potatoes out of the Zuni Cookbook. Judy Rodgers says that every time they put these potatoes on the menu, whatever entrée they are served with outsells the others by three to one. That sounded like a pretty ringing endorsement to me.

But on Thanksgiving day, when I went to grab the potato masher, it wasn’t there.

This in itself is not shocking. The Treehouse kitchen hasn’t been lived in that long, and at least half of my kitchen stuff is still in California. I don’t often use a potato masher so it’s likely that it just didn’t occur to me to bring it up. I only ever mash potatoes at Thanksgiving.

So I improvised—with forks, a pastry cutter, I even pulled out the immersion blender at the end, in desperation. I ended up with a gluey mess that nobody wanted to eat. No great disaster, really, there was a huge amount of food anyway (and mashed potatoes with stuffing and yams always seems like a lot of starch to me).

But this year I’ve searched high and low for that darned potato masher and I just can’t find it. It’s not in my kitchen in California, it’s not in my mom’s kitchen either. It seems to have up and vanished.

So I bought a new one, which makes me a little sad because I liked the old potato masher. It had a wooden handle that at one point had been painted red but the paint had flaked off over the years (hmm, next to food, not all that safe now that I think about it). It was probably a match to this pastry cutter that I also adore.



I love these old kitchen tools—dinged and battered thought they may be—because they remind me of growing up. I remember playing with them in the kitchen when I was a child and we lived in the country and in the winter there was always a fire in the wood-burning stove and wood in the woodbox and even though it was dark outside and raining like the dickens, we were warm and cozy and safe.

I think I’m a little in mourning for that old potato masher. Glad I still have the pastry cutter.

In other news, I am still laboring away on the book (I know, I know, you’d think I’d be done by now). But the holidays are approaching. I can feel it in the air. Soon it will be Thanksgiving.

So here is your challenge—should you choose to accept it. What sort of holiday plans are you cooking up these days? What are you most looking forward to? (or what recipes—I’d love to hear).

If I’ve learned anything it’s that the end-stage of writing a book is a rather solitary place to be. Drop me a line, tell me a joke—or at least give me your secret for fluffy mashed potatoes. I may have a new potato masher, but after last year’s travesty I’m a little afraid to use it.