I've been hard at work preparing the traditional Hillbilly potato salad for Easter dinner at my mom's house. I also boiled 48 eggs. None from our chickens, mind you. Their hen fruit is not conducive to boiling and peeling. Beside, they are already colored. Tan, brown, blue-green, green-blue. I will, however, use three of them in my Oreo cake later.
I like to use the Klondike Rose for my potato salad. It is not mealy. But it IS a bit gummy after boiling. As I removed the skins with the back of a knife after they'd cooled from their 30-minute, 212-degree Jacuzzi, my hands and blade became clogged with skin. Those potato jackets clung to me like a timid toddler being dropped off for his first day of preschool. You've never seen such a cauldron of potato salad as I whipped up this morning/afternoon. I needed a child's sand shovel to stir it. Over and over. I think I may need rotator cuff surgery.
That potato salad is a hit wherever I take it. Like a celebrity welcomed with open arms. It's very time-intensive. So I don't take it many places. One year I made the mistake of taking it to an end-of-school potluck. Oh, it was popular, all right. More popular than the "Presidential Potato Salad" that one of the coaches picked up at The Devil's Playground on his way to school. But the joke was on me. It took him ten minutes to prepare his dish. It took me 2 hours. One of the teachers loved my potato salad so much, he still talks about it. And the last time I took it to school was 2004.
Besides potatoes, it includes diced boiled eggs, diced onions, diced dill pickles, pickle juice, yellow mustard, Kraft mayonnaise, fresh ground pepper, and ground sea salt. The last two are new this year, because my teaching buddy, Mabel, gifted me with those grinders for my birthday. WE LOVE THEM!
I made about five quarts of this delectable ambrosia. Only four made it into Frig. I had to sample it, of course. And The Pony declared the he might have just a bite. Then he decided on a small bowl. Then he carried over a large bowl and said to fill it up. The #1 son returned home from an aluminum-selling session, $90 richer, and declared that he was famished. So he knocked back about half a quart of the Hillmomba treat. Farmer H had called dibs on a fair share for after he finished mowing the front five acres. He had worked up an appetite taking apart my mom's lawnmower carburetor five times. Looks like she's going to have to rely on #1's machine until the parts come in.
I'm hoping that there's enough potato salad left to take to dinner tomorrow. The deviled eggs will provide a distraction. A new item to sample.
It sounds like you could barter with that potato salad. What kind of things could you get or get done, with a small tub of potato salad as the bait?
ReplyDeleteThe deviled eggs may provide a distraction, but they will disappear as quickly as the potato salad does in my experience. And they are easier to sneak and get (as some people can hide and devour a deviled egg in one fast hand to mouth swoop). Good luck getting any of it to your Easter Dinner get together. Can't wait to hear about that!
ReplyDeleteSioux,
ReplyDeleteShort of installing a chain and lock on Frig, I don't think I could barter for anything with that potato salad. It's a free-for-all around here. Unless, of course, I wrap it in a shapeless lump of aluminum foil and put it in Frig's posterior.
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knancy,
You are right about the deviled eggs. Referred to until this morning by The Pony as Debiled Eggs, because he said that he used to say Doubled Eggs, and I corrected him, and he said Deviled Eggs, and I said NO!