Is that everyone thinks that they have the PERFECT recipe. And they're all correct, as it turns out...

The day before you mean to serve the salad (potato salad improves with age):

Boil the potatoes, (Russets are best for soaking up the sauce), in their skins until fork tender.

Boil a half dozen eggs.

Peel the cooled potatoes and dice into a large serving/mixing bowl.

Peel eggs, dice and add to potatoes.

Chop Gherkins or any similar sweet pickles into small pieces, add to mixture.

Add enough good mayonnaise (not Salad Dressing!) to hold it together.

Add about a fourth cup of prepared yellow mustard.

Stir and turn gently until all is mixed together

Add celery seed to taste. (Celery is a strongly flavored veggie that can overwhelm the other ingredients after a day or two. The seeds don't seem to do that. I would avoid onions for the same reason.)

Salt, pepper, sugar are all optional, to taste.

Add whatever other ingredients, herbs and spices, suits your fancy.

Let's see, in between tripe like this, and "GlennAlanWalker" just reciting pathetic Bushie talking points, and paying even more money for CamilleP (was she Joan Walsh's hero as an undergraduate, lo these 20 years ago?) and Joan figuring that everyone wants to know, up to the second, just what cable TV or radio host has had her on to fill five minutes of airtime. . .

I paid a couple of years for Salon premium, but didn't renew last February. Figure I'll just send the money to Glenn Greenwald, as he's the only writer here who is worth reading.

Somehow, potato salad, fried chicken, and Americana cannot excite with health care in danger, war and torture still rule.

Need help with the cognitive dissonance thing.

which doesn't care to bother itself with the real difficult, stickling issues of our existence. Hence the explaining away of torture, and the focus on personal trivialities in life.

I believe that in as prosperous a country as ours, we can both make potato salad AND bring murderers to justice. That's not too idealistic, now, is it?

Oh. And don't forget the real banana pudding! I mean the real stuff--not the fake "banana flavored" stuff. Made from vanilla wafers and lots of sliced bananas with real pudding poured over the top. Left to sit in the ice box overnight so the flavors attach to each other and then served cold.

In Germany, there is a North-South divide concerning potato salad. Especially in the South, making a good, homemade potato salad is a matter of pride. (Northern Potato Salad is the same as the one you'll find in the US.)

Boiling, peeling is the same. But you cut up the potatos while they are still warm and stir in (preferably homemade) meat broth, onions and vinegar.

What you end up with is a delicious, tasty and creamy potato salad without the mayo and much less prone to tasting only of the same.

Right on! I get your point.

that is worthwhile is: after you cook them - and don't cook them so they are mushy, and be sure you leave skins on and cut in fairly good size chunkers - drain all water from the pan, pile those spuds into a good size bowl. Drum roll here, are you ready: take ONE STICK OF REAL GENUINE HONEST TO GOODNESS BUTTER and let it melt over the top of the potatoes, you can cut the butter up or just kinda' roll it around the tops of the potatoes so it oozes on down thru the bowl.

You cannot imagine the difference it makes in the final result. My daughter-in-law's mother did this and it is incredible!

Garrison, we live in such a hurry-up world don't we. Take time to "make" something, eeek! A priest once said, while he was teaching an aerobics class (another entire story there): you can't 'get there' in an instant, no one wants to take the time to buy the oranges, squeeze them and make real orange juice. Ditto potato salad. You'll feel great when you bring that bowl of the real stuff to the holiday gathering.

Both potato salad and Garrison Keillor (and his godawful program, Prairie Home Companion) are boring crap. There are better things to eat and better things to listen to. I'm not surprised one of my least favorite radio personalities champions one of my least favorite foods. Potatoes with mayo? There are so many amazing flavors and ingredients out there, and that's what you choose? Prairie Home Companion? There are so many good radio programs, and that's what you like?

saved by serialization, Keillor.

Sequencing 'love' offers relief to the moralist who imbibes, with abandon, on notions of security.

It's fairly impossible to do this with eagles, live theater, and potato salad.

But he made ya look, didn't he?

What say you write back and delight us with the lurid details of your other masochistic pursuits?

...NEVER miracle whip or pickle relish. That turns it into that cheap tasting Walmart stuff they get out of the 55 gallon drum from a big company. Oh, it's OK in a pinch, but it tastes cheap - polyester instead of cotton, cubic zirconia instead of diamond, Pergo instead of hardwood....The upscale grocery here sells a small plastic container of the REAL stuff here for upwards of $7, which I find shocking, but the dummies from the McMansion subdivisions throw it in the cart along with their microwavable staples...So make a big old batch , after you spend the day prancing in the hot sun in the Big 4th of July Parade, and pity the puking anorexics who shudder and run at the very sight. Oh, and it goes well with real hot dogs, with casings that snap when you bite into them. None of that Oscar Meyer or Ballpark frank crap, that's for sweaty people under the age of 12 (who might prefer hard ridged potato chips on the side).

My mom makes a great potato salad but she uses chopped raw onions which "repeat" later in the day.

I experimented and found a tasty substitution for raw onions by using curry powder and cutting the mustard portion in half.