4-23: Mashed Potatoes with Broccoli

The fourth of the 4 dishes I made before I left for my trip a few weeks ago is from Book 1, Group 1 (Appetizers & Starters), Subgroup 4 (Potatoes & Vegetables), Card #23: Mashed Potatoes with Broccoli. I made this dish to accompany 6-4: Easy Stuffed Chicken Breasts and to use up some CSA veggies.

4-23 Mashed Potatoes with Broccoli

They ended up being kind of…boring. I realize neither mashed potatoes nor broccoli are EXCITING things, but this dish needed a lot of help.


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This one’s a bit stained–I’ve made it before. I don’t remember exactly when, but it was for some dinner long ago. I must have neglected to make a notation–that’s how boring it was then too.


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Potatoes were from the CSA box–German Butterball potatoes. Subbed half-and-half for whipping cream, as usual. I had run out of homemade stock at this point, and so I resorted to using up the last of a jar of chicken base I found in the fridge door as a replacement for veggie stock. Obviously, don’t use chicken stock if you’re trying to keep it vegetarian.


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Cut up potatoes–you can see they’re a bit yellow on the inside (even without my post processing).


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My sous chef (husband) chopping up the broccoli for me.


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I worked on the green onions.


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I already had the VitaMix out for 3-13: Velvety Carrot Soup, so I (lazily) decided to just mash up the potatoes and broccoli using that. Lack of a dishwasher leads to bad decisions in the name of washing one less dish, sometimes.


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It turned the bottom to liquid and the top stayed pretty chunky.

Sigh.

Before doing any more damage and really being upset with the results, I stopped as soon as I realized this was not going to work.


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Keepin’ it old school. Sometimes the simplest answer is the best one.


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There’s just no way to make that picture look appetizing. I’ve been watching a lot of nickreboot lately, it looks like a chunk of old green slime to me. Here’s the mashed up broccoli + taters after adding the half-and-half and cooking liquid.


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Looks more consistent/appetizing now. Here’s the green onions, continuing the greenness of this recipe.

After adding the onions, it was still pretty boooooring. I added in some garlic salt just to give it something without straying too far from the original recipe.


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The final product, or what was left after we ate some with 6-4: Easy Stuffed Chicken Breasts. It was okay, but nothing special. It’s a very good recipe for someone who’s not picky and/or hates anything super flavorful.

Grade: C