potato salad...



When the family meets this weekend to hobnob and burn burgers, the family member assigned to bring the potato salad is likely going to walk in with a couple of gallon plastic buckets of yellowish muck bought at a convenience store, the price stickers still on them, and set them down on the table with no apology whatsoever.

Or, if they have more disposable income, they'll bring paper containers full of brownish muck from the natural organic sustainable united empathetic co-op.

If you bring garbage to share with your family, the least you can do is tell a lie and say, "I couldn't make the potato salad myself because I am bipolar and my lover left me and my dog has leukemia and I have an oozing leprous sore on my mixing hand."

It is not that hard to make potato salad, people. Take half an hour away from your Facebook page and do the job right. Boil some eggs, chop the celery and chives and green onions, boil the potatoes, make your mayonnaise, maybe toss in a little sour cream, use plenty of dill, and sprinkle paprika on top. The eerie-yellow store-bought stuff in the tubs was manufactured at Amalgamated Salad in Houston by undocumented 12-year-olds from the hills of Michoacan. Worse, it is teaching our children that accomplishment doesn't matter.

A child served yellow slop from a bucket is being told that it's OK to plagiarize a term paper off the Internet just so long as it's poorly written.
Garrison Keillor, Salon,com.

Amen brother.
That yellow muck that shows up at every church picnic and family BBQ. It is time take a stand. It isn't just about potato salad anymore, the tender souls of children are at stake. It has taken me 7 years to get Gage to freely admit that homemade hamburgers are better that McDee's or Burger King.

This summer I started mashing my boiled eggs with one of those potato mashers that looks some kind of branding iron. I LOVE how it uniformly gets those eggs ready for salad or sandwiches in virtually no time at all. The whole eggs mashing process, literally took my breath away.

It is all right to cut corners but we need to be responsible about it and potato salad is nowhere to begin. Use dull shears - it will take twice the effort but as long as no one gets hurt, who doesn't have a few hours a day to spare? Imagine a generation where the yellow muck was not only gone but where fables of its existence were met with playful skepticism.

Attend to the details. Teach your children manners. Write cogent paragraphs. Drive carefully. And make a good potato salad, one with some crunch, maybe accompanied by a fried drumstick with crackly skin -- the humble potato and the stupid chicken, ennobled by diligent cooking -- and is this not the meaning of our beautiful country, to take what is common and enable it to become beautiful? All our beautiful young people -- so diligent and focused and powered by hope -- you can't tell me those kids didn't have parents who took time to chop the celery and onions and experiment with the ratio of mayo to mustard to achieve a potato salad that is worthy of our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor. Word GK...