Do the Mashed Potato

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Most people love mashed potatoes as part of their Thanksgiving feast.  What’s gravy without them, right?  But if you want to try something new and innovative this year, this book will introduce you to all kinds of choices like chipotle mashed potatoes with cilantro butter, or pesto mashed potatoes; also various mashed sweet potatoes with additions such apples and maple syrup, vinegar-glazed shallots, or spiked with bourbon and a pear puree.   
When the potato was introduced to France in the 1600’s, it was considered weird, poisonous, and even evil.  It was accused of causing leprosy, early death, and syphilis, and destroying the soil of wherever it was planted.  How things have changed in modern times, as we have a dance called the mashed potato, and songs where potatoes are mentioned as in “Land of a Thousand Dances,” and “Do you Love Me” from Dirty Dancing.  There are potato museums and a website that will tell you which movies have potatoes in them, such as the scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind where Richard Dreyfuss forms Devil’s Tower out of a pile of mashed potatoes.
However you like mashed potatoes, enjoy them this Thanksgiving.  You will find lots of ways to do so in this cookbook.  Maybe you can start a lively conversation at your Thanksgiving  table by discussing some of the following myths about potatoes:
-If a woman is expecting a baby, she should not eat potatoes because the baby will be born with a big head.
-Laying a potato peel at the door of a girl on May Day shows that you don’t like her.
-Keeping a potato in your pocket will cure eczema and rheumatism. 
-If you have a wart, rub with a cut potato, then bury the potato in the ground and your wart will disappear.
(Any of these discussions may be less controversial and definitely more fun than politics!)

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