Monday, February 24, 2020

Lumpy Potatoes

Mike, his friend Leonard, and Dinky Dog (named Tiny for the most obvious reason) arrived early and the guys went right to work on Truck.  Tiny also went to work.  He is so low to the ground that I hadn't seen that he is a boy dog before, but when he hiked a leg to piddle I saw my error.  There is a term for the competition that Michael and Tiny entered, each one trying to out-piddle the other.  It's a boy thing.  Mike hit a snag when he realized he'd bought the wrong oil filter and he sent Leonard off to get the right one.  It being Sunday, Leonard had to go several places to find an open store with the right filter.  Mike kept working, but I could tell he was getting antsy.

In the meantime, I went in to watch a Martha Stewart rerun while waiting for NASCAR to start.  In the current vernacular, OMG!  You never saw such a production on how to make mashed potatoes, of all things, passing the steamed (not boiled) potatoes through a series of graded sieves because, lord knows, any sign of a lump is not acceptable.  She stressed that one should never, ever, use a food processor or even an electric mixer.

Money was scarce in the '60s when my four Kids were little.  It was actually cheaper to buy a box of the then-new instant mashed potatoes than to get the real deal.  At least they got the potatoes, sort of.  The point of this tale is that my Kids were thrilled when they were served less than pureed, lumpy mashed potatoes.  Those spuds came out of the ground, not a box.  Take that, Martha.

Truck was up and running and the guys took off.  Michael darn near dehydrated himself re-marking everywhere Tiny had been.  There would be no mistaking whose property this was, Michael made sure of that.

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