Soul-full Sisters: Mama’s Stuffed Potatoes

From the recipe box of the Soul-Full Sisters

I think we’ve made it pretty clear that our Mama, Mama Alice, is an amazing cook. As I was watching the movie, Julie & Julia for the 100th time last night, it came to me that although Mama’s food tastes delicious, it’s more about how it makes us feel.

Photo by the Soul-Full Sisters, Quinn Carlton Bostic, Paten Carlton

For those of you who haven’t seen Julie & Julia, besides dropping everything you are doing and going to rent it on Amazon Prime right this second, I’ll give you a little synopsis: Julie starts a food blog and cooks every recipe in Julia Child’s cookbook, Mastering The Art of French Cooking. While she cooks the recipes, she is able to connect to Julia, she can hear her voice in her head, she can understand what she went through; with every recipe, she felt closer to her and felt like Julia was becoming a piece of her.

This is how Paten and I feel about cooking with our Mama. There is no better place to be then sitting at Mama’s bar, watching her cook the recipes she has made for us our entire lives. Recipes, that as you are growing up, you get excited about seeing when you come home from school, but then as an adult, you literally salivate thinking about them because you haven’t had them in so long.

One thing you may not know about Mama is that she LOVES a potato.

Any way you can give it to her, she just loves a potato: scalloped, baked, roasted, and… stuffed. Potatoes are always her choice of side. Because Mama loves them so much, she cooks them extra special. Mama’s stuffed potatoes are one of those dishes that when you came in from school and saw the “naked” halved potatoes laying on the aluminum foil-lined baking sheets, and the stuffing mixture in one of her glass bowls, you immediately got excited (and very hungry).

This is one of those recipes, that when Paten and I cook them in our homes, we feel Mama there with us, and hear her voice saying “make sure to oil and salt the potato before you bake it. I use the little can of mushrooms.” Kinda like how Julie felt recreating all of Julia’s recipes, she felt close to her. And close to our Mama, is where we always like to be.

They’re filling and comforting, just like they should be. Growing up, we usually had them with a grilled steak and tossed salad. For this post, we went home and cooked them with Her Royal Highness The Queen Bee of Stuffed Potatoes herself aka Mama Alice.

Written by the Soul-Full Sisters, Quinn Carlton Bostic, Paten Carlton

Photo by the Soul-Full Sisters, Quinn Carlton Bostic, Paten Carlton