craftygal fridge - Recipe for Grandma's Famous Dairy Farmer Potatoes

McDonald’s web site offers coloring fun in McDonaldland! (Go to Birdie’s tree house to find the coloring book.)

Recipe for making McDonald’s fries… at home. For real!!

Utz potato chips are some of my favorite chips--I think it’s the kitschy mascot.

Delicious Dairy Farmer Potatoes Steal the Show

by Christy

There are a couple dishes that I always go to my Grandma Anderson’s hoping she’s made. Her tender, juicy pork and sauerkraut meal at the New Year is one of my all-time favorite dinners. She makes these fabulously tangy company carrots, which is a recipe for another time. But on this particular, early fall day as I trekked home to Bemus Point, New York, I was rooting for the dairy farmer potatoes. It had been ages since I’d piled my plate high with these cheesy, creamy potatoes. Lucky for me, I had the opportunity to do so that evening (twice) when I arrived home.

I have a love/hate relationship with the potato. It can taste so good, and so bad depending on the preparation, and the amount of salt the cook is willing to pile on these starchy veggies--yea, should they even be called veggies? As a child I believe I mostly hated them. That is, of course, unless they came fried, in an oddly shaped red box with yellow and white stripes inside, ketchup on the side, and extra salt packets.

As I aged, I began sampling other varieties of potatoes. The following table outlines my general assessment of the basic potato recipes.

Potato Option	Verdict
Chips	Very salty; therefore very good.
Baked	Bland, but add salt, butter, sour cream, chives, chili, cheese, etc. and now we’re talkin’.
Twice baked	Good in my book, because cheese or other such savory ingredients are added to the mashed part.
Mashed	Great with salty gravy!
Potato salad	Tends to be bland, but the right amount of salt can bring out all those different flavors and marry them together quite nicely.

Okay, I think you catch my drift. The recipe that follows is a family favorite. We just can’t seem to get enough of this savory side dish, which is filling enough to become the main course if you’re not careful!

Ingredients:

5 cups of coarsely grated, cooked potatoes

1 cup of sour cream

2 Tbsp of chives

2 cups of small curd cottage cheese

1 Tbsp of grated onion

1 tsp of salt

3/4 cup-1 cup of grated Romano cheese (enough to make a nice little crust on top)

Directions:

1.) Preheat oven to 350.

2.) Boil unpeeled potatoes for until tender.

3.) Coarsely grate potatoes with regular old cheese grater.

4.) Combine potatoes, sour cream, chives, cottage cheese, onion, and salt together. Mix well.

5.) Place concoction into a 2-quart casserole dish, and sprinkle generously with grated cheese. Also, sprinkle a little paprika over the top for a dash of color.

6.) Bake for approximately 1 hour, 30 minutes and serve hot.

This is a great fall alternative to potato salad since it’s served hot.