THE NEVER-ENDING POT OF MASHED POTATOES

December 14, 2003 | 8:35pm

It’s 8:35pm on a Sunday evening. Why am I not watching Alias on T.V. you ask? Well for one, I just wrapped up the all Alias weekend aka "The Alias Viewing" aka "The Alias Party." Only the coolest of the cool are invited to this annual event held at my chateau in Lyon, France …

Okay, you know I’m full of it. You also know that my elitist nature only comes out when I’ve been drinking — it’s my version of a hang over. And you also that all it takes is 1/4 of a beer to get me this way. So after three martinis, a Corona and two redheaded sluts yesterday, I’m feeling extremely snobby. Along with my snobbiness comes my obsessive-compulsive need to run off the booze calories and clean my drunken apartment that gives me this feeling of accomplishment and class, empty as it is. But I really can’t complain, my bathtub is sparkling and my butt is toned and firm.

I begin to unpack my backpack from the weekend of sin and alcoholic festivities. Inside, I find the most gigantic stainless steel cooking pot I have ever seen. This thing is huge, it’s so big that all of my other necessities (Franklin Covey planner, sketch book, and Alias Season One on DVD) are all placed inside of it. Inside of it! That’s odd, I think to myself but I could’ve brought home stranger things I suppose. Hell, I could’ve even brought home a stranger. As I set it down on the couch I recall that it was a close friend who handed me the pot last night as a going away present.

I asked for the pot for one reason and that is to make mashed potatoes. I made some for my friends over Thanksgiving, but I had to make it in multiple batches due to the minute size of my cooking equipment. A friend had made an additional pot and between both of ours, everyone was able to have as much as they wanted; I even took home the extras for a few more meals.

My brother reminded me over the phone today that in our household this would have never happen. Under no circumstances would there ever, EVER, be leftover mashed potatoes. For holiday gatherings there was a certain strategy for eating. You can’t use the same rules for eating at a buffet, oh no. At the Tapia table, one has to be ruthless. One has to eat with a game plan. One has to eat really REALLY fast.

If the manna from heaven rained down to my family in the form of mashed potatoes, we would have finished it. If the loves where broken and passed along and if the baskets of fish were full to the brim (again, in the form of mashed potatoes) we would have eaten all of it.

So thank you for the stainless steal mashed potato-cooking pot. I will always treasure it. But since I don’t need to make the dish until Christmas, it’ll come in handy as a stepping stool to clean those pesky cobwebs stuck to my ceiling.