Potato Salad
9:24 a.m. - 2008-12-05


The spouse's birthday is being celebrated this weekend, so we have invited the EGs to attended a lunch. The spouse has requested his mother's recipe for Toasted Hamburgers which she got from a magazine many decades ago. It involves mixing the ground beef with onion and bacon, egg, flour, seasonings, Worcestershire sauce, and catsup, spreading the mixture on a bun and broiling it. I won't do the broiling bit since it is hard to be sure the meat is safely cooked, so I will just make the mixture into burgers and use my George F. grill. Abby is going to bring her cake pan for a filled cake; I think she has a chocolate cake with whipped cream/raspberry filling in mind, and I am making various vegetables plus potato salad and french fries. EG is bringing one of her wonderful fruit salads. The spouse wants potato salad, but Abby hates mayonnaise (!!!) in all its forms so we will try making some french fries.

My mother made the best potato salad which I have never really duplicated, but my sister Melissa definitely has the knack. My mom always used a recipe she got from Mamie Eisenhower (not in person, of course, but from a magazine article). In addition to the potatoes and eggs, she added a vinegar dressing to the hot potatoes, then mixed in the mayo, celery, pickle relish, chopped olives, green onions, and pimento. I love potato salad.

We had to go to sign papers for Melissa's (daughter) new abode, and whilst waiting in the waiting room yesterday, I noticed that the spouse was wearing the socks I made him for Christmas last year out of Woolease. He had to wait this long for really cold weather to wear them, and it turns out that he loves them. This is good because it is certainly a lot faster to knit a pair of Woolease socks than the Opal socks I am currently knitting. I am not too pleased with this Opal yarn in dark brown, since the yarn seems to go thick and thin on me. I am sure the socks will be fine once washed but it makes the knitting more difficult. I wonder if they make Woolease in navy blue?

We are having gloomy foggy weather, very cold. Well, cold for a Californian, I mean it may actually get down into the 40's at night (shiver)! Fall leaves are still on the trees.

Melissa and I have frequent conversations on what we would choose for a 'freebie' food if such were granted from heaven. This would be a food you could eat in great quantities with no adverse health effects. Sometimes we argue over whether it would be better to choose mayonnaise or cream (still up in the air on that one) but yesterday we discussed a meat choice if such were offered. I couldn't decide between bacon or spam, but Melissa has a mind of lazerlike clarity and pragmatism, so she said I should just choose pork as a whole. Since this would include just about all my food vices, it would be a brilliant choice. I see that James Villas has written a cookbook all about bacon, so I will have to see if I can order it from the library. And speaking of pork, one of these days I will have to try making greens with a ham hock and pot likker. We love this at Mary Mac's Tea Room in Atlanta, so it would be a useful recipe learn.