Using leftover church potatoes

So after Thanksgiving lunch at church, over a gallon of mashed potatoes lay abandoned. "Take them if you want," someone said. "They'll just get thrown away." Well I just couldn't let that happen. Volunteers kindly peeled all these taters, then we prayed over them. Something about church food makes it seem more valuable than usual so home I went with a gallon of mashed spuds.

I suppose not everyone would consider an evening in the kitchen a good time, but I do. My whole Friday night I spent making this & that, except when I was eating my creations, and what a wonderful time I had. To begin I made potato patties (or pancakes depending on your family jargon) and they were okay. Not spectacular, but etable. I added an egg, chopped onions & red peppers (sweet) and fried 'em up. Boring. The next dish had to be better than that one.

Next I made potato bread. My new bread machine (from my mother) is one of my favorite toys right now. I added all the ingredients listed in my handy dandy bread book, used up 2 cups of those precious taters, and left it to mix & bake.

Then I moved on to soup. Somewhere in my travels, I ate this yummy potato bacon soup, so I thought I'd try & copy that out of my memory banks. I started with a veggie broth (I should add this is entirely made from scratch, with the exception of one chicken bouillion cube I added towards the end). To make the broth, I cut up one onion, 3 sticks celery, 3 large carrots, 3 large cloves smashed garlic and a tea ball with herbs (bay leaf, rosemary, & a little marjoram). Boiled that for a little over 2 hours.

In another pan I fried bacon that I cut into 2" sections. After the bacon was crispy, I removed it from the pan & sauted onion, celery, and some sweet red pepper in the bacon fat. Now another option would be to not use the bacon drippings and maybe just some non-stick spray or something. Everyone is so fat concious these days, but I was looking for flavor not diet control.

Into the sauted vegies, I added the mashed taters. Then I added this to my vegie broth (which I strained all the vegies out of). I added in a little over half of the bacon bits and reserved the rest to garnish each bowl. I found I needed a little thickening, so in another pan I melted 2 T butter and added 1/2 c flour. It needed a little more liquid, so I used some of the soup until the flour was all mixed up. I cooked that a few minutes before adding it to the soup pot. A little celery seed, some white pepper, and yum!!!!!

About this time I checked the bread. It was like looking in a window where someone was looking back! There was way too much for the little bread machine & dough was risen & pressed against the window at the top. Oh, well I'm sure it will taste good.

Now I still had more potatoes. I mixed shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, hidden valley dressing & a bunch of potatoes. I put this in muffin tins & froze it. Now if someone wants cheesy taters, individual servings are all ready to pop into the microwave & eat.

And that did it for the leftover church food. The bread was nice, soft, spongy & delic!!! Soup-excellent. Mmm I could have my own restaurant someday. That is probably one of my all time favorite ways to spend a night, cooking & baking away.

People should spend more time together in the kitchen. And I think that should be a must for my potential partner, to love food, either cooking and or eating it. Nothing like playing with a loved one in the kitchen. Isn't food kinda like sex anyway? It can be good or bad or just okay, but 'cha gotta have it sooner or later.... okay, I suppose some people out there don't gotta have it. Oh well, that's another entry.

Everyone have a great day!!!