The Best Classic Potato Salad

Perfect Potato Salad

Nothing says summer like potato salad. It’s a standby at all the summer holidays, Fourth of July, Memorial Day, and Labor Day. If you are throwing a picnic or BBQ, people have come to expect it on the table, but that sloppy mess that the grocery store is serving you is not, I repeat, not potato salad. I know it takes time and it is not a pleasant summer past time to be in a hot kitchen when the afternoon breeze is calling you to the shade of your garden.

I mean who wants to be lording over a stockpot full of boiling potatoes in the heat of the day? Not someone without air conditioning that’s who; so when you live in an old Victorian with no ac but the shade from the old growth trees surrounding your home, you learn a few little tricks and tips to make this summer staple a dish that you don’t dread when requested. First stop peeling your potatoes. Just stop. It’s ridiculous. The peel holds any vitamins and minerals you may happen to get after boiling and it adds texture and color to the dish.

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Easy Valentine’s Brunch

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Butter My Hot Rum

buttered-rum-2To me, the holidays are about being around family and friends; hanging lights, trimming the tree, singing carols and drinking the old fashion cocktails of the season.  With times being what they are, in this busy life, you may never even have had the privilege, or the joy, of drinking a fresh cup of homemade Eggnog.  You may not even know that a Tom and Jerry is, not just a cartoon, a classic Christmas cocktail.

This drink took the forties and fifties by storm, when drunk in many a Hollywood holiday film (even though it has been a traditional yuletide beverage since 1820 when Pierce Egan wrote Life in London, or The Day and Night Scenes of Jerry Hawthorn Esq. and his Elegant Friend Corinthian Tom; Pierce wanted to promote his book so why not invent a cocktail…best idea ever!)

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Great-Grandmother’s Homemade Irish Soda Bread

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I am thinking about time travel today and not because I have been watching Cosmos.  I am thinking about time travel because I want to go back to a specific place in time.  I want to go back to Elko, Nevada, March 1960.  My mom would be nine years old.  She would most likely be in the sweetest dress you have ever seen with her hair bouncing in its natural curls.  My full-blooded Irish great-grandmother Hortense would be in the kitchen.  In the kitchen she would be busy but not too busy to be singing.  She would be signing the songs of her homeland while her hands moved quickly.   Not too quickly of course to lift a spoon to my mom’s lips and offer her a taste of the meal to come. 

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