They call me Tater Salad.

My mother gets bored easily. I know what you are thinking, "Wow, Jamie, that's so unlike you. You NEVER get bored, you must be adopted!" but shockingly enough, it's true. She is my real mom and she gets bored. But, unlike me, she gets bored and tries to F up the holiday menus. She keeps trying to serve lame things like roast or Cornish hens for Easter, and I keep having to remind her that having anything besides ham on that Sunday is blasphemous. So, in an effort to defy my authority (I'm the youngest child, anyone who thinks the youngest child doesn't have full control of the house, even 10 years after moving out, is gravely mistaken)she serves ham but tries to mix it up by making some other dish differently.

This year it was the potatoes that took the hit. I can't even explain what they were really. Sort of like potatoes Au Gratin but made with like cream of mushroom soup or something equally disgusting with this crispy crust which she later told me was supposed to be cheese. Huh. How a French person fucks up cheese is beyond me. Anyway, even though I didn't like it, I kept my mouth shut (mostly) but the entire table agreed they were sub-par and no one wanted to take any home with them or save the leftovers.

As we were cleaning off the table my mom handed me the baking dish and a spoon and asked me to shovel them into a plastic bag so she could just toss the bag away and keep the garbage from getting liquidy and gross. So she holds the bag open and I scoop it up, spoonful by spoonful when my mom goes to adjust the bag and shift the potatoes further down so I could get the rest in there. As she moves the bag *PLOP* the entire mound of grossness ends up on the actual table and floor. There was no bottom to the bag she had grabbed! This wasn't a matter of the bottom breaking and it all falling out, I had been spooning the mixture down what was essentially a plastic tube and directly onto the table itself!

By the time I had stopped laughing and ran to get my camera, she had cleaned the mess up from the table but there were still bits on the floor. All I could do was laugh and tell her that would have never happened if she had stuck with mashed potatoes like Jesus wanted.