Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes

I caught myself making a mistake almost as soon as I started cooking "Olive Oil Mashed Potatoes" (NYT Cooking; subscription required). I screw up recipes all the time, but usually it takes me a while to figure out that I have, for example, halved only SOME of the ingredients. Sometimes it takes until I sit down and put a bite in my mouth before I realize I have done something laughably wrong.

But last night, as soon as I popped my potatoes and garlic into the pot of boiling water, I looked back at the recipe and realized the potatoes should have been not only diced, but also peeled. Whoops.

My failure to dice just meant I'd need to cook them longer, which I did (I fished out the garlic after 15 minutes), and that was fine. But I was chagrined by those skins, as I watched the taters cook. I tried to reassure myself that even fancy restaurants sometimes offer skin-on mashed potatoes, albeit for unfathomable reasons.

But when I started squeezing my cooked potatoes and garlic through my ricer, the clouds parted and a choir of angels began singing, because the potato innards went through the holes and the skin simply stayed in the ricer! WHAT?! This changes EVERYTHING. I shall never take the time to peel a potato again if it is destined to be mashed. 

I have previously extolled the virtues of the ricer, but I had NO IDEA. I wonder what other life-altering and wonderful secrets my potato ricer is keeping? Can it also smooth the wrinkles on my face? Can it keep my driveway free of snow in the winter? Can it help save the environment? Actually yes, in that it is a handy tool for a mostly vegetarian diet. Yeah, it's a miracle tool.

But it's not just the ricer that's pulling off miracles. This recipe...it is VEGAN. No sour cream, no milk, no butter; ergo no cows burping greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. And yet the mashed potatoes are somehow genuinely delicious! I confess that took even me by surprise. 

My small backup dancer's school has been virtual since the start of the pandemic, but this week, her marvelous teacher arranged for families to pick up supplies outside the school, so they got to meet for the first time in person. I love this picture of their distanced high-five so much (the shadow!) and I am in daily awe of this teacher, who has the unbelievable reservoirs of patience needed to shepherd 26 eight-year-olds through online learning, with a sense of humor and fun. Seriously, she is incredible and I want to give her an award and roughly 1,000 vacation days.