The store was closed. The party was soon. Forced to improvise.
One thing you may notice below is, truth in measuring. That’s not a new political initiative to make our lives more miserable. It it were, it would have to be named untruth in measuring. That’s just an admission that I have no way of weighing two pounds of potatoes. I tried the heft (not to be confused with the Hef) method. That’s where we hold a known (like a can of beans) weight in the left hand. We sort of pretend to toss it up by raising the hand quickly. We sort of pretend to catch it on the pretend way down. When we get the feel of that, we take the unknown weight in the right hand and do basically the same thing. Once we’ve mastered the hands separately, we do the hands together. Then we mentally compare the “heft” of the right hand to the “heft” of the left hand, but only after picking up the items from the floor. With bruised potatoes and a mildly self-bruised ego (just hope there’s no one in the room with you), we then follow a decision tree approach to help evaluate the differences in weight between the two. If the hands ultimately are determined to be of the same heft, all is well. We know that the amount of potatoes in the right hand is equal to the pound of canned beans in the left hand (unless of course the canned beans were net weight, then we’d have to adjust for the weight of the can). Don’t ask now how to adjust for the can weight. If the hands are not of the same heft, then we’d have to add or subtract potatoes from the right hand until we hefted equally. That would be good if individual potatoes came in standard same sized weights. They don’t. And what about people with small hands? Can they hold enough small potatoes in the right hand to equally heft a can of beans in the left? Can large clumsy hands hold without dropping several small potatoes? People who have unfortunately experienced an accident may be missing some of either hand? How do we adjust for that? How do we adjust for the force of gravity, which varies slightly from place to place on the earth (trust me on this one – remember that weight equals mass times gravity – but does anyone know the relationship between heft and gravity?). Well the complications and contingencies are endless. The possibilities are maddening. If only the store was open, I would’ve saved myself all the visits to the psychoanalyst.
All this is just to say, two pounds of potatoes sounds authoritative, but don’t believe it. Just adjust the remaining ingredients within the proportions given to match your idea of two pounds. Always remember, if it’s a party, everything will be eaten eventually.
Ingredients
about 2 pounds of potatoes
about 2 cups mayonnaise – 1/2 of a 30 ounce jar is what I ended up using, plus some for the eggs
1/2 to 1 – juice from a real lemon, adjust the tartness by the squeezes
1 to 2 tablespoons sweet pickle relish
1 to 2 teaspoons prepared Dijon mustard
1 to 2 teaspoons ground paprika
1/2 to 1 teaspoons Worcestershire sauce
6 hard-boiled eggs
4 slices of bacon, fried, cooled and crumbled – 3 for the salad, one for the cook
kosher salt and milled pepper – or whatever’s in the shaker
Directions
Clean the potatoes under cold water. Boil the potatoes in skins until done. Allow the potatoes to cool some. Peel the potatoes. Cut the potatoes into thin slices. Cut the slices into about 1/2 inch squares.
In a large bowl, squeeze the lemon juice on the cut potato pieces. Add salt and pepper. Gently mix it all together. Add the relish, Worcestershire Sauce, mustard and paprika to the potatoes. Gently mix again. Starting with 1 cup, add the mayonnaise to the potatoes. Gentle mix and do a quick visual and taste test. Add more mayonnaise as required until it gets the way you like it. Similarly, adjust the other ingredients if the taste is not to your liking.
Hard-boil the eggs. Allow to cool. When cool, peel and carefully split the eggs in half the long way. Remove and save the yolks. Chop up the whites from two eggs in small pieces to be added to the potato salad later. Keep the rest of the white halves for the deviled eggs.
To make the deviled eggs, smash the cooked egg yolks with a fork in a small bowl. To the smashed yolks, add a tablespoon of mayonnaise, a teaspoon of pickle relish and a quick shot of Worcestershire sauce. Mix, look and taste. Add and mix additional ingredients to the yolks until you get it right. Take the egg yolk mixture and fill the split cooked egg whites. Sprinkle with paprika. Eat one to reward yourself.
Add any remaining egg yolk mixture and the previously chopped up pieces of cooked egg white to the potato salad. Gently mix it together.
Place the potato salad in a serving dish. Sprinkle with paprika. Artistically place the deviled eggs on the potato salad. Take a picture.
Tags: cooking, deviled eggs, food, potato salad, recipe, recipes
Ain't Found A Good Title Blog 
Leave a Reply