Dishing It Up Recipe Hop: Freezer Mashed Potatoes

Its August, and back to school time is here!  School starts on Monday, and I've spent a good bit of time putting stuff in the freezer this week!

The Dishing It Up theme for the month of August is freezer cooking, and my friends over at Thrifty Texas Penny, Pary Moppins, Deals From MS Do, and Dearly Domestic will all be bringing you some of their freezer recipes as well!

PLUS, we will be giving away two $5 Amazon codes this month!   One blogger that links up a recipe will be selected at random to win the first one, and one commenter will be selected at random from one of the recipe links (also selected at random), so after you check out my recipe, leave a comment, and click through the linky to visit the other recipes, and leave them comments, also!  If you have a freezer recipe, link up!

My recipe this week is Freezer Mashed Potatoes.

Last week, I was shopping around at the 99CentsOnly store.  I *really* like that place because they sell produce, BUT it can be a dangerous place to shop, too.  It can get you into the mindset of "oh, it's just a dollar", and those dollars sure can add up quickly!

I go there when I'm int he mood for salad though, because I can usually find some hearts of Romaine and Spinach there.   This time, I was surprised to see 5lb bags of potatoes.  For $0.99, I grabbed one because it's been quite a while since we've had potatoes.

When I got to the register, I noticed that they rang up only $0.60, so I asked her to scan it twice, and I went and grabbed a second bag.

Having potatoes is a little tricky when the rest of your meal is coming from the freezer.   They take so long to bake, so much oil to french fry...Then I remembered that just the other day my oldest was asking to have mashed potatoes.  I used to find great coupon deals on the boxed kind pretty regularly, but haven't seen any in a while, plus also we've been getting away from boxed foods altogether, so we've had a mashed potato famine around here.

They sat in the pantry a few days while I tried to decide what else to do with them, until I finally say, forget it,  I'll just mash them all!  And I did!  Well, my husband helped.  ;)

I put all of them in a big stock pot and boiled them until they were soft.  Then we drained them and mashed them.  I had to separate them into two of my big mixing bowls since there were so many.

We added in some salt and pepper, and some milk and butter.   I didn't measure, I just adjusted and stirred until the consistency looked right.   I left the skins on, but you can peel them if you prefer.

We ate some with our meal that night, and then I spooned the remainder into muffin cups.   Muffin cups make a great serving sized portion of these  (you can fill them halfway for kids, or heaping for husbands!) and then you just have to thaw and serve!

I ended up with 2 shy of 4 dozen after we'd eaten our fill with dinner.

After I froze them, I popped them out of the muffins tins and bagged them in freezer bags.   These will come in super handy during the school year!

Here are the other freezer recipes that have been shared so far this month.  Don't forget to add your own if you have one, and hop around leaving comments on the other recipes to increase your chances of winning!