mashed potatoes. truly the gift that keeps giving. a little over a week ago, i made mash out of four enormous golden delight potatoes. the portion we did get around to eating — with a crispy-skinned salmon fillet and a side of mixed asian mushrooms quickly sauteed in oil-butter-garlic — i mixed in the last few brussels sprouts in the crisper, thinly sliced and fried up with minced garlic. mmm… smooth, creamy mash with bitter green crunch.

the next evening, following too much lunch at a chinatown foodcourt, i made a light dinner of fishcakes! a tin of red salmon, a tin of sweetcorn kernels, a good grating of butternut pumpkin, a cursory beaten egg and the leftover mashed potato: squished up in-between my fingers and formed, most of it, into palm-sized patties. these i coated in an improvised dusting of flour, polenta, pepper and salt. and then i fried them up to golden crunchy brown and we had three helpings for dinner — that’s five or six fishcakes. huff.

but quite a bit of leftover mash, bulked out with salmon and corn and pumpkin, yields quite a lot of fishcake mix. so we had fishcakes for lunch sunday, and then the boy left for south america on tuesday morning, and then i fried up the remainder mix for fishcakes on tuesday night, and then, surely tempting the gods of food poisoning, had the very last two on wednesday afternoon for lunch, as a sandwich, with sliced tomatoes and dijonnaise. yum.

after i served up dinner tuesday night, and before i was quite ready to sit down and eat, the kid scrambled up onto my chair, and was reaching past my plate to get to the spoon in her bowl.

she said, “i want to eat some of your yellow thing. your yummy yellow thing.”

“you mean, the fishcakes?” i asked. she had previously been dissecting them with her bare hands, picking out all the corn first up, and then maybe eating a handful or two of the mushy innards.

“no,” she said. “your yummy creamy yellow thing.”

“oh,” i said. “um. that is mayonnaise mixed with mustard. i’m not sure that you will like it. but you can try.” so she did.

“was it yummy?” i asked.

“no.”