Fishing Rod / A Cooking Misfortune

Yesterday we made a trip to the cultural, economical and whatever else centre of the general area we live in. This centre is a town, a 3 hour drive through the vast nothingness away, and according to Wikipedia it has an estimated 12.000 inhabitants.
Well, what can I say. Fruit's less expensive, the variety of yoghurts available for purchase is bigger, and I got myself a fishing rod.
Curse me, I bought it at evil Walmart.
I also got line, a bunch of weights, a number of hooks and one little box to put all the stuff into. Paid 48 bucks for it. Seems like now I have to go fishing. My wife said she's expecting me to bring fresh fish home at least thrice a week.
Today evil fate had me fall victim to a serious cooking misfortune. I made pork with mashed potatoes, spinach and carrots and salad. My wife rated the meal: Good meal. Meat's crispy, food's hot.
So far, so good. Only in my opinion the meat was dried out and the mashed potatoes smelled funny. They smelled funny in a way that suggested a certain rottenness. As if a rotten potato had somehow snook its way into the pot. Argh. One of the last ones out of the 20 pound bag. The ones that had gotten wet.
We passed on eating it.
Conclusion number one: Don't use oil if you have butter, and don't let your potatoes get wet a.k.a. MAKE FUCKING SURE they are not rotten.

Indicators for rottenness:
- funny smell in potato-storage
- weird brown liquid in potato-storage that seemingly comes out of potatoes
- potatoes are soft to the touch or go pfft when applying pressure
- potatoes have interesting non-potatoish-colours: shades of grey and brown, mostly
- presence of flies and other insects

Conclusion number two: Act according to what's there. Stop believing everything will be okay. Not every potato is good just because you want it to be.

I should have known better.