Are you thinking about it yet? I know this piece will publish on Halloween but with the leaves continuing to fall while scarecrows and pumpkins adorn front doors of our homes, I can’t help but start to think about Thanksgiving, and, specifically, the food. Oh my, the aromas of the turkey and stuffing (yes to in-bird stuffing for me!) and rolls baking. Even though the meal itself winds up only being a thirty-minute gastronomic delight, the anticipation of it all makes my mouth water.
The stuffing is my absolute favorite part of the whole Thanksgiving meal but there’s a close second — t he po tatoes. Not just any type of potatoes but the heavenly humble side known as mashed potatoes. The steaming mini mountain of deliciousness on the plate with a little well created with a fork and a generous pour of turkey gravy filling it up, running down the sides.
Oh, my goodness. Whoever invented this combination should be given a posthumous James Beard award. Well, it turns out there’s a ton of history around mashed potatoes and potatoes as a food source in general.
Writer Ernie Smith wrote an article, “Mashed Potatoes: The History of Everyone’s Favorite Thanksgiving Dish” (www.shortformernie.medium.
com) and it’s really quite fascinating if you’d ever like to take a deep dive into mashed potatoes like I did. Root vegetables have been consumed for centuries but the potato was considered a lowly staple, primarily used to feed livestock. An 18th century French pharmacist na.