Recipe #21 - Potato Salad

Well, this is one of the recipes that I was dreading making.  Potato Salad.  (It's on page 74, but not online.)  My kids and husband both hate potato salad.  I like it, but I don't love it.  I'm willing to eat it when I'm served it, but when I pick my side dishes while out to eat, potato salad is never one of them.  So what in the world was I going to do with a big bowl of homemade potato salad? 

Our family was invited to a dinner tonight (with lots of other families) and asked to bring a side dish.  I knew exactly what I was going to do with a bowl of potato salad, so I went to work making it!

First you need the ingredients.  You'll notice there is no mustard in this recipe.  Good, 'cuz I hate mustard.

When it comes time to scrub, peel and cut the potatoes, I do not recommend asking your 12 year old son to help.  His comments might leave you feeling a lot like the Little Red Hen and then doing all the work yourself with a much grumpier disposition.  Hypothetically speaking, of course.

While the potatoes are cooking, you can start working on everything else.  You whisk together everything but the potatoes, celery and eggs.  It looks a little like this prior to whisking.

When the potatoes are fork-tender, you drain them and let them cool at room temperature.  This might take longer than you expect.  I actually took a small cooking break and had lunch while I waited for them to cool. 

Once they're cool, you stir in the potatoes and celery until everything is coated. 

Then you fold in the hard-boiled eggs, and you have a salad that looks like this:

You'll notice that it isn't yellowy like most potato salads.  I'm guessing that its the lack of mustard in it.

I made my husband taste it...remember that he hates all potato salad...and he looked a little something like this.

Not kidding.

The salad needs to chill in the fridge for 3 hours, so be sure you give it time to do so. 

At the dinner, I didn't hear any comments about the potato salad for better or for worse.  To be fair, I didn't know a lot of the people there, so its not like they'd seek out the person that made it.  However, not a lot of it got eaten either.  It made me wonder if it tasted okay or if the non-yellowy look made it so people didn't realize it was potato salad.  Perhaps, potato salad isn't a favorite for more people than I realized.  Or it could be that there were lots of kids there, and they tended to have plates full of watermelon, rolls, and cookies.  Clearly, I've been thinking about it though.

So I called my sister at 9:30 at night, asked if they liked potato salad and if I could come over.  She and her husband graciously tried it and gave me their opinion.  Both enjoyed it, but neither went crazy over it either.  My sister mentioned it not being really mustardy and prefering it that way.

Both of them gave it a thumbs up, but they preferred to give it a "spoons up" for the camera.

I would say that this is a lot of work to go to for people who only sorta like potato salad.  For those people, go to the grocery store and buy a tub of it.  Just make it for people who will truly appreciate the hour this recipe takes to make.