I love cooking dinner for family and friends so we tend to have a lot of dinner parties. It's funny, though, how sometimes things go unexpectedly wrong. Many moons ago we had invited Wayne and Melinda over for dinner. I had prepared steaks and twice baked potatoes and Wayne had just said how delicious everything tasted. He was about half way done with his spud and taking another bite when all of a sudden there was a CRUNCH about THIS big. Needless to say, conversation came to a screeching halt.
We all stared at him in shock. His face seemed similarly surprised and his jaws had quit moving. He very slowly began taking inventory of his teeth with his tongue. Eventually he pursed his lips together and very slowly (and with great apprehension on my part) produced a stone from his mouth. Everyone at the table stared expectantly at me so I began stammering, "....what the...well...how did THAT get in there??" (Cue the awkward silence as everyone spent some time thinking about what I might have done to fuck up dinner.)
My husband eventually cleared his throat and said, "Huh. Well, the potato must have grown around the rock. You know, in the dirt. Where potatoes grow. (::ahem::)" We all sat there in more silence contemplating that I had already baked these potatoes, cut them in half and then scraped out the insides to mash them with my cheese and whatnot. I must be a shitty masher to have not noticed the ROCK in mashed potatoes. I'm just glad he didn't lose a tooth.
Talking about potatoes has me WANTING potatoes. Did I mention that I'm on an Atkins diet? Yup. No spuds for me for a while. With or without the errant stone. Here is my current favorite spud recipe. Ya'll try it and I'll live vicariously through your carbohydrate consumptions.
Michy Potatoes:
A word to the wise, you'll need about twice as many as you think as people will try to bogart these.
In a large mixing bowl put 1/4 cup dijon mustard AND 1/4 cup course grain mustard. Add a half cup olive oil, about a tablespoon of seasoning salt and freshly ground pepper. Cut up a small onion and throw it in. Stir it well. Cut up about 4 medium sized potatoes (I leave the skin on.) and throw them in the bowl mixing well.
Roast them at 375 on a baking sheet with a rim. Stir them every 15 minutes or so until their done. It takes between 45 minutes to an hour. Add more salt if necessary.
They are really awesome. But watch out for the rock.
I'm feeding my potatoes to humor-blogs RIGHT NOW. Yummy, yummy!
Comments
i have some great cheats though if you need them!!
Do people kind of gum their food now when you cook?
My first Thanksgiving dinner, the FUCKEN turkey wouldn't cook! I had a house full of people so my FIL finally grabbed it out of the oven, sliced it and set it on the table. The things was whiter than I was after realizing it was still kinda bloody!
It turns out the oven was working correctly, now my turkeys are Martha-Stewart-wishes-she were-me worthy.
Bee - Gross! Bloody turkey.... As for people gumming their food when I cook, nope! That was 15 years ago and in another state. They don't make us register like they do the sex offenders! ;) But maybe they should....