Thanksgiving my way

Let me preface this by saying that Kelli was absolutely right with her guesses last week--except for one. No, I am not a master chef by any means (though I can cook more than just chocolate chip cookies, so I suppose she was partially right).

Which brings us to Thanksgiving. My friend Stephanie arrived around 5 and we immediately started drinking wine. Somewhere into the first bottle, I realized that I hadn't eaten all day, making the wine all the more potent. With the pumpkin pie already baked and the cheesy dip in the oven, Stephanie and I thought maybe we should start the mashed potatoes. Only then did we realize that neither of us knew how to make them (beyond the mashing, that is). For some reason (wine, perhaps?) it didn't occur to either of us that I had at least three cookbooks, which I'm sure would have had recipes. So we decided to cut up the potatoes and cook them, and meanwhile drink more wine.

About half an hour later, we decided to take the potatoes off the stove. Actually, the mulled wine we were making was ready (priorities, people!), so as long as we were going into the kitchen for that, we figured we might as well stop boiling the potatoes too. But drinking the mulled wine sounded way more fun than figuring out the potatoes, so we drained them, got more wine, and left the kitchen again.

It wasn't until around 7, when the wine started running low, that we decided maybe we should prepare and eat the potatoes. We called Stephanie's mother to ask how to make them, and she gave us a few pointers. Then we drank more wine.

At about 8pm, we remembered we still hadn't cooked the potatoes, so we headed into the kitchen with new determination. Unfortunately, they were cold by now, but that didn't stop us. I used a hand mixer that my mother bought for me several years ago, however I'm generally against hand mixers, (things taste better when you mix them yourself, in my mind) so I had never used it. Still, I wasn't about to attempt to mash cold potato chunks with just a fork in my drunken state. So out came the mixer, which meant that potato chunks flew pretty much everywhere, and I'm sure I'll be finding them for years to come. After the mixing, we had to microwave each individual serving so that they'd be warm, but the reheating mostly just made them oozy. But, three bottles of wine into the night, I can't say that we cared too much.

And so it was, Thanksgiving my way. Fun for me, fun for Stephanie, perhaps not so fun for the potatoes, but oh well. None of the evening was fun for the cats either, who wanted no part of any of this. They headed straight under the bed the minute Stephanie showed up and didn't emerge until after she left. Oh well. Those cats have no idea how to party.

And so I will end with my recipe for Drunken Mashed Potatoes.

Ingredients:
Wine
Potatoes
Milk
Butter
Cheese
Garlic

Directions:
1. Drink wine
2. Boil water
3. Cut up potatoes and put them in boiled water
4. Drink more wine while the potatoes cook
5. Remove potatoes from water and let them sit for 2-3 hours (or however long you feel like drinking more wine)
6. Chop potatoes into slightly smaller pieces
7. Throw in some butter, milk, cheese, and garlic (How much, you ask? Doesn't matter when you're drunk!)
8. Mix with hand mixer. Try to keep hand mixer pointed down, rather than to the side, in order to keep contents in bowl. Contents will be thick, cold, and will not mix easily, but keep trying. If you get discouraged, have more wine.
9. (optional) Reheat individual servings
10. (optional) Or just grab a fork and go for it

Drink more wine, and enjoy!