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The damned thing is broken.

And just when I needed it.

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The lever has sort of slumped over to one side. If it were human, you’d say it needed a hip replacement. Now it won’t fit into the channel that guides the pressure down into the hopper that holds the potatoes.

The broken thing is a potato ricer, which is sort of like a garlic press for potatoes.

It makes — made — the most fabulous mashed potatoes.

You see, the secret of mashed potatoes is in squeezing out every drop of the cooking water.

Boiled potatoes wrung dry yield billowing cumulus clouds of mashed potatoes.

An unnecessary step?

God — and heavenly mashed potatoes — is in the details, my friend.

But it’s broken.

Damn.

I suppose it was bound to happen.

The ricer, after all, is about 100 years old.

It was my maternal grandmother’s. She gave it to my mom.

I nicked it from her.

Three, maybe even four, generations have earned the title of Potato Priestess by virtue of this contraption.