Father’s Day 2011

I woke up this morning to breakfast in bed. The kids made me scrambled eggs, bacon, French toast, cheese, avocado, and bananas. Oh, and coffee too! The meal was great…mainly because I didn’t make it and because I saw the amount of time and energy that the boys put into making the meal.

I was telling someone that I was going to do two things this Father’s Day—fly a kite and make a bacon weave. I didn’t get to fly a kite this year but I did make the bacon weave.

I had to make good use of the bacon weave so I made it the foundation for my Father’s Day dinner. For dinner, I made rib eye steaks, mashed potatoes, grilled oysters, and stuffed mushrooms. I call it one of the meals I’d eat if I knew I only had 24 hours left to live.

Here’s my recipe for Mashed Potatoes:

Ingredients
3.5 pounds of Yukon
1 stick of butter (unsalted)
1 tablespoon of salt

Method
Boil potatoes with skin on until you can easily pierce it with a fork and then the fork comes out smoothly (about 30 minutes). Remove from heat, drain water and place back in pot. Add the stick of butter and salt. Mash…or whip using a mixer.

Tips
You can peel them for fancier mashed potatoes. Add white ground pepper for some heat. I don’t normally add cream but you can if you want to make them smoother.

There’s another technique that I do with Yukons if I have time. I don’t have measurements and requires a lot of butter. Just when you think you added enough butter…you need to add more. Here’s the method for really good mashed potatoes. Boil the potatoes with the skins on. When done, peel the skins off the potatoes and whip with some butter (just like above). Let the mixture cool a little and add room temperature butter. Whip it more. Then add cold butter and whip. Serve at room temperature.

Enjoy!