Gimme some spuds

I must confess. My biggest love-next to my hubby and children-is potatoes. Top of the list is mashed, but my family gets a little grumpy if the only potato they ever find is mashed, so I need to mix up the rotation a little bit. Last year when my grandma died, I wrote a page of memories that I had her pastor read (I choke up when I see puppies on TV-didn't want to try making it through a reading). I wrote about many memories I had, but the one that stands out the most is how she made my favorite meal every time I came to visit. Pot roast, mashed potatoes, corn, and lettuce salad with Western dressing. I told everyone how I sat there in my kitchen when I got the call that she had passed and thought about that meal, how I would never taste pot roast as good as hers every again (I'm tearing up as I write this-I'm such a wuss). And I wondered why I never asked her for her recipe. I have tried and tried, and I make a pretty good pot roast, and a few that were barely edible, but none that compare to Grandma Owney's. I think it was her legacy, if you will. I think I never asked because I feared that if I knew how she did it, the meal would never taste as good as I anticipated on every visit. So Grandma Isabelle made the most righteous Swedish Meatballs and Grandma G. made the bomb of a pot roast. Owney is just how we pronounced her first name. I do have to say thought, my mashed potatoes are better than hers. I can say that now that she is looking down upon me-but she is probably wiggling a finger at me! After all that ramble, I'm not even making mashed potatoes, but oven roasted. My love of the mashed just overtook me and the love oozed out onto the keyboard.

Oven Roasted Potatoes

3 pounds potatoes-any good roasting type, I used Idaho russets

1/4 cup olive oil or vegetable oil

1 packet onion soup mix (I used Lipton)

salt

Paprika

Scrub up potatoes. Cut in half, and then those halves in half again. Cut to make chunks (sorry, that sounds gross, but best word I came up with) that are about the same size so they all cook evenly. Preheat oven to 400 degrees while cutting up the spuds. Place potatoes in roasting dish-whichever type you choose. I used a stoneware one as I love them. Drizzle the oil over the potatoes then sprinkle with the soup mix. My kids don't like the big pieces of onion so I usually roll a soup can or something similar over the envelope before sprinkling on, but you don't have to. Use hands and toss potatoes so they are all covered with oil and onion mix. Sprinkle with Paprika. Place the pan in the oven. Bake for 1 hour, stirring every 15 minutes so they don't stick to bottom of pan. Start testing for doneness after 45 minutes in case your oven may cook faster than mine. To quote Rachael Ray, Yum-O!