Carol Hartery's Creations: Potato Salad

Hi Everyone!

I usually use this blog to post photographs of my papercrafts, but as you know I also post food creations every now and then. After Saturday's party I received 5 e-mails requesting my recipe for potato salad so I figured I would post it here. The picture is an old one, but it works for this post.

Many years ago I found a recipe for Confetti Potato Salad in the Boston Globe. I adapted it somewhat and used it over and over again until I lost a copy of that recipe. But I had made it so much by then that it didn't matter. Some of you won't like that I don't have exact measurements for the ingredients, but trust me. Robbie, Marie and I each make it on our own and it always turns out good.

We start out by scrubbing red skin potatoes. We do not peel them. The skin adds color and texture to the salad and fiber and vitamins to our diet. We cut the potatoes into bite sized pieces and place them in a large pot. We cover them with cold water and bring them to a gentle simmer, not a boil which might make the potatoes burst. We simmer them for about 10 to 15 minutes. We know the potatoes are done when they are easily pierced with a paring knife.

While the potatoes are cooking we dice about one cup each (more or less depending on how many potatoes we have cooked) celery, carrots, and red peppers and maybe one half cup of red onions (sometimes we leave the onions out).

When the potatoes are cooked we quickly drain them, but do not rinse them. We work quickly and add the diced vegetables. We use our eyes to judge how much of each vegetable to add. We want the salad to be colorful like confetti.

We add a hefty serving spoon size of Cains Mayonnaise (our favorite brand) to the bowl and stir until all of the vegetables have a slight coating of mayonnaise on them. Then we shake red wine vinegar onto the salad and stir again. We sample the salad at that point and see if we can taste a little vinegar and mayonnaise. If not, we add a little more. I have taught Robbie and Marie to add a little mayo and a little red wine vinegar at a time. If you don't have enough, you can always add more. If you add too much...yuck.

We sprinkled chopped fresh parsley over the salad and if we don't have any fresh parsley we use some from a jar.

This potato salad is always a hit. Many people don't add vegetables to their potato salad so they are pleasantly surprised to see how much prettier and tastier it is with vegetables in it.