When I was working my first job out of college, my boss Cathy and her husband Ken were a charming and sophisticated and unfailingly cheerful couple, the kind of couple that it is easy to envy, the kind of couple that one suspects of stumbling upon some hidden secret to a happy life.  If there was, indeed, some magical key to their happiness, they never told me what it was. But Ken did once tell me how to make amazing mashed potatoes.

“Do you want to know how to make the best mashed potatoes in the world?” he asked me. He had a glow of office-party wine and benevolent wisdom about him.  “Do you?”

And I did. In fact, I was dying to know. There is something alluring, maybe even thrilling, about the idea that just one simple component has the power to utterly transform the whole.

There are, in my opinion, a few different categories of secret ingredients. Continue reading →