Every year on Thanksgiving, I try to make my grandmother’s baked mashed potatoes.
And every year, they are always good. Good, but never the same.
Hers were incredible. She always made them in the same clear glass Pyrex casserole dish. They were creamy and fluffy on the inside and brown and crispy on the outside. And every year they tasted EXACTLY the same. Not similar.
Exactly. The. Same.
Like all of my grandma’s cooking, she had this incredible talent for walking into the kitchen and coming out an hour later with a complete dinner of perfectly cooked food that was always always always the same as it was the last time she made it. And the kitchen would already be clean. And everything would be hot all at once.
It was like a magic trick of comfort and predictability.
My grandmother was like the grandmother from storybooks. She wasn’t even five feet tall, and was built like a walking, talking, human pillow.
She had a smile that lit up a room and a laugh that came easy.
She was safe, and soft, and made of warmth and a hefty dose of biting sarcasm.
And her mashed potatoes were the best, and making them feels like visiting her warmth in a small but meaningful way.
So every year, I try. And every year they are very very good. But they are never ever the same.
Not the same as hers. Not the same as the year before.
I think it’s one of the things I miss most about her; one of the things I wish I would have known to ask more before she died. More than anything, I wish she would have let me stand with her in the kitchen to learn how she managed not just to make everything taste wonderful, but how she accomplished the same-ness. She never measured. She never had a recipe.
She just had sixty years of potato mashing on repeat. She had practice. She had 10,000 hours of mashed potato mastery under her belt.
Before she died, I called her to ask how to make all sorts of things. She would walk me through every step, and still… they were never the same as hers. Usually not even close (and I’m a pretty decent cook).
Always good. But never the same.
This year, I leaned into the not-sameness. I stopped trying to make mine taste like hers. My glass Pyrex was long left behind when we moved across the world. So this year, I made them in the cast iron pan that was a gift from a dear friend; one of the non-negotiable cherished items that I could not leave behind.
They were different. Made with small, buttery Portuguese potatoes. Each one peeled carefully because my daughter’s sensory discomforts mean she absolutely can’t enjoy them with the skins on. The butter was from the town of Manteigas in Serra da Estrella, a region known for some of the very best cheese in the world and a town literally named “Butter”. The salt was from France, and the cream came in shelf-stable little shelf packs that don’t even exist in the US.
There was no world where I could make mine taste like hers.
That’s how it is, isn’t it? Heritage. Love. Evolving under pressure like diamonds. Ever changing to emerge from layers of pain and grief and hardship as little shiny gifts to be polished and cherished.
When I was little, life felt chaotic. Unpredictable. I cherished the safety of my grandma’s sameness. Now my daughter, a kid who moves through the world thriving on predictable tracks of routine, loves my mashed potatoes because they are different every time. She loves the surprise - safe in the knowledge, of course, that mommy always loads them up with a stupid amount of butter. This year, she even helped me mash.
So for all that time I spent trying to get back a perfect tradition that was long long gone, the people I love now - who I cook for now - only want the tradition of my creative flavors and the joy they bring in the few moments we come together and laugh about how I can never seem to make the same thing twice.
And for that, I am so so grateful.
Grateful for the presence I have learned that lets me see this after years of only ever living three steps into the illusory control and imaginary promise of the future.
Grateful for the simple, pressure-free holidays we create in our family.
Grateful for the flexibility of the work that I love that allows me to spend three hours on a Wednesday peeling and mashing and baking potatoes.
Grateful that you’re reading this. And that it is actually part of my job to sit and contemplate the meaning of mashed potatoes.
And now, I’m even learning to be grateful for just how many things in this life are always good, but never the same.
Especially mashed potatoes.
Each year, in gratitude for all that I have the privilege to be and do in this life, I do something special for my professional community.
This year, I decided that we could all use a little break from the present. So I am rolling back my one-on-one coaching rates a full decade so we can party like it’s 2015. Back before the November that broke the world. Back before $11 butter and $9 eggs. When hope wore a pants suit and I was very very pregnant.
That means…
Usual rates: $2250 Intensive + $750-1250 per month for 6 months
The offer is available until all four spots fill or December 9th, 2025. Whichever comes first.
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