I’ve always liked the smell of potatoes cooking. A humble, simple, homey smell. The aroma also reminds me of the years we lived in Holland. In those days I cooked potatoes almost every night, washing, peeling, cutting up, and cooking twenty to thirty potatoes for our family and the four young college men who lived with us. Those students could eat three or four large potatoes each. Times have changed, but back then, a Dutch hot meal nearly always included potatoes. A typical and nutritious Dutch way to prepare potatoes was to mash them together with another vegetable, like cooked kale or carrots or beets. Mash some cooked beets into your potatoes and you have a deep pink potato dish, made even more delicious by adding bits of bacon and a dribble of bacon fat mixed in, or instead of bacon, add some cubed ham. Smakelijk eten!