Mom has spoken! The following are the greatly-simplified instructions:

Slice 5 or 6 medium potatoes (not too thin). Dice some onion for extra flavour. Cut 1 to 2 lbs. of smoked sausage in slices of a half inch or less. (Cutting frozen sausage before it is fully thawed makes the task easier.) Put potato slices, onion and sausage together in a pot and add enough water to almost cover. Cook covered for 20 minutes. Save a cup of potato water but pour the rest off. (Or if you have milk powder, save more and mix the powder into the water). Add enough milk to almost cover the potatoes and sausage.  Reduce the heat to low.  I add  two tablespoons or so of butter or some cream to make the dish richer (depending on whether you've used skim milk or homogenized).  Let the potatoes, milk, butter and sausage co-mingle for at least 10 minutes.  Stirring helps reduce the problem of potatoes burning on the bottom of the pot.

There are many good choices of herbs and seasonings which can be added to this dish (add after you put the sausage and potatoes together with the milk).  Here are several that I have tried with success:
Parsley (as pictured - fresh, or dried flakes), celery seed (which tastes like celery!), caraway seed (don't go overboard), or thyme.  I always put additional black pepper in this dish as well as salt, but you might want to add these once served at the table.

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