Of the foods I made for this year’s Thanksgiving dinner, the biggest hit was probably the twice baked potatoes. Ok let’s start by defining “biggest hit.” What I mean is, everyone who ate it, liked it. There wasn’t anyone who only was ok with it; it was a liked food. Here’s a sampling of actual honest to goodness reactions - “Mmm, so delicious!” “Sublimely superb.”  “So dreamy.”  Oh wait - that’s Sean Connery.  So I’m going to share my rendition of this pretty common dish, which by the way, here’s where I got the recipe.

I changed it a bit to suit my audience and my desire to live to see another day. If you look at that linked version, you’ll know what I’m talking about. It’s fine for those who live on a farm and do a lot of farmy stuff, not for folks who play Wii, whine about sore arms, and call it a workout.

So first of all, I stuck to organic. As organic as I could get without it being too inconvenient. I mean running around to various places just for an organic ingredient probably negates all the good just from the gas burned. Thankfully most grocery stores carry organic so that wasn’t too difficult. Also, there’s a spectrum to work with when it comes to healthy and tasty - from tree-gnawing-fiber healthy to heart-attack-upon-first-bite delectable. There’s plenty of room in between to pick where you’d like to fall on that continuum. Frankly, I don’t think healthy necessarily means a sacrifice in taste. Sometimes, you don’t even notice what you’re missing because it’s just that good. Yes, I’m just that good!

Ok, I think I’ve filled my braggin’ quota for the hour. On with the show…

Ingredients:

• 6 potatoes (Russet)
• 1 Tbsp butter (salted)
• 7oz container lowfat Greek (strained) yogurt
• 2 cups shredded Monterey Jack cheese
• 2 green onions (scallions)
• 1 tsp paprika
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper
• 1 tsp black pepper
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 turnip
• 3 cloves garlic

I’m guessing on the amounts of spices and cheese. Honestly, it was a few shakes (or handfuls of cheese), stir, mash, a few more shakes, mash, mash, so on and so forth.

The instructions are on the linked site. The only thing I add that needs to be prepared in addition to her recipe is boiled turnip and garlic cloves. Wash the turnip and cut it into big cubes. Boil it until it’s soft and mashable and throw it in with the potato innards and all the other ingredients and mix it up. I’m sure roasted garlic would’ve been better but I didn’t do that this time around. When it comes to spices, cheeses, knock yourself out. Use what you have, skip what you don’t. I’m sure dill mashed potatoes would be just as tasty. What you must have is potato. Everything else is optional. Although the less you add to the potato, the more it’s going to seem more like a baked potato rather than a twice baked potato. And we all know, it’s the second baking that gets us those oohs and aahs.