The neighbor gave the host family a bunch of turnips. (By “bunch, I mean about two dozen of varying sizes.) No one in the host family had any interest, so I felt obligated to find some use for them. My tooth was still giving me problems and was going to be pulled the next day, so I knew I needed very soft food. After looking at a few recipes online, I decided to do a mashed potato sort of dish with turnips added.

I went to the store and bought a 15 pound bag of potatoes. I didn’t need that many potatoes, but per pound, the 15 pound sack was the best buy. I guess I’ll be eating a lot of potatoes in the weeks to come. That’s ok. I’ll need soft food for a while.

In addition, I bought a box of vegetable broth, a large yellow onion, butter, and milk. (I also bought a carton of half-price chocolate ice cream, but that’s not part of this recipe.)

In the host family’s kitchen, I got out two large stockpots. I threw a couple tablespoons of butter in each pot and let it melt and get a brown, but not burn. While the butter was melting, I chopped the onion very fine. I threw half of the onion in each pot, and cut the potatoes and turnips I had scrubbed.

I didn’t peel either the potatoes or the turnips. I don’t usually peel potatoes for mashed potatoes or potato soup. The peels don’t bother me, and I’ve been told they offer added nutrition and fiber. According to http://healthyeating.sfgate.com/skin-potato-really-vitamins-5378.html, “The skin [of a potato] contains 5 grams of fiber, and you’ll get 2 grams of fiber from the flesh.” Also,

It doesn’t represent the amount of skin and flesh you would get in one whole potato, but another way to compare them is by considering an equal amount of each. One hundred grams of skins, which is about equal to the skin from two potatoes, has double the amount of seven nutrients, five times more riboflavin, seven times the calcium and 17 times more iron than the same amount of flesh. You would get the same amount of vitamin C from equal portions of the skin and flesh. By comparison, 100 grams of flesh is about two-thirds of a whole potato.

But if potato peels bother you in mashed potatoes or potato soup, by all means, peel your potatoes.

I didn’t know if I needed to peel the turnips, so I didn’t. I think the turnips had less of a peel than the potatoes did.

After reading other recipes for turnips and potatoes together, I kept the potato to turnip ratio about 3 to 1. (Since the turnips have a stronger taste, you need to use more potatoes, unless you want your dish to taste strongly of turnips. If that’s what you want, it’s fine with me.)

Once the onions were very soft and translucent, I added the scrubbed and chopped potatoes and turnips right on top of the onions. I made sure to leave enough room in the stockpot to add plenty of liquid. Once the potatoes and turnips were in the stockpots, I added about half a box of vegetable broth to each pot. (You can use chicken broth if you prefer.) Next I added water until the potatoes and turnips were totally covered. Then I let the potatoes and turnips boil until both were very soft.

At this point, a lot of the water had boiled away in one of the stockpots, so I was able to get all of the potatoes and turnips in one pot. I didn’t pour everything together, because I had more liquid than I needed. (I saved extra liquid for cooking whatever may need liquid to cook in later.) I mashed up all the root vegetables, and added milk as the concoction needed thinning. I left it pretty thick, but if I’d wanted to, I could have thinned it even more, until it was more like a thick potato soup. I added more butter to the whole pot, but added salt to each individual serving I ate.

It was pretty good. The turnips added an extra, unusual flavor kick, but did not dominate the dish. Eating the mashup did not hurt my mouth.

Image courtesy of https://www.pexels.com/photo/potatoes-beside-stainless-steel-cooking-pot-45247/.