The picture: mashed potatoes and corporate meatloaf. Meatloaf was free.
Cost per person: $1.50
Of course the corporate meatloaf is just a side dish. The meal is mashed potatoes. My first “you are in charge of x” when growing up was to make the mashed potatoes. This served me well as a teen because I could make gigantic batches to insure that I wasn’t going to starve eating whatever the other course was even if it was extremely low calorie 90s recipes. Between my brother and I we could easily eat three or four pounds of potatoes in a single sitting. There were never any leftovers.
I never peel the potatoes. They are always skin on between the boil and the hand mixer they are soft and hard to detect. But they do contribute to nutrition, texture and add variety of color in a tiny amount.
I do stock instant potatoes. They come in handy when you don’t want to deal with 15 to 25 minutes (induction vs direct heat) over a pot of boiling water when the humidity is already too high in the house. I’m not a fan of the granuale texture but sometimes I just deal with it.