"use good mayonnaise"

                        

There are a few repulsive ingredients that make my stomach churn, just to get you started on our trip down queasy-lane, let me toss a few out......anything on a bone, over-cooked veggies, spam, fried potatoes, cream of mushroom soup [in anything] and Miracle Whip[oh, gag]. So what is Miracle Whip you ask, believe me I was asking the same thing...apparently it's a salad dressing and sandwich spread that has about 20 additional spices whipped together with mayonnaise products to give it a sweeter, tangier (yuckier) taste! 

  So, I'm trying to make a point here, no time to wax poetic. I abhor sounding like a broken record, but once again...you know, I love the food network, and I adore Ina Garten! Imagine what it's like to live with me, the hubs constantly has to hear me yack about Ina Garten as if she were a frequent house guest. Ina says this and Ina says that and Ina says "use good mayonnaise"! Well, how le heck do we know what she means by "good mayonnaise"? We know, because she tells us in the FAQ section of her book Back to Basics that she uses  Hellmann's or Duke's, and how can Ina be wrong?

We were invited to a picnic on Memorial Day and the only question  the hubs had was..."will there be potato salad?" [the hubs loves potato salad and since he so seldom asks for anything I wanted to make sure he got it]. After a call to the hostess offering to bring potato salad I was assured someone was making it, and could I make the desserts? oui...but of course!  So while I made cheesecake, chocolate crazy cake and Amerikas (more on those another day), someone was making potato salad [with Miracle whip and just for an extra dose of queasy, tossed in the juice from the pickles!!!] Let me just say this about the potato salad...the hubs is a pretty tolerant guy, but don't mess with is potato salad, enough said. I know! I mean I really do know, once when I was expecting my Mom to make her potato salad for a picnic, she cut up a variety of "lunch meat" and mixed it into the potato salad (yikes! I gag just thinking about it). So when I asked the hubs what I could do to make it better, he of course said "make your potato salad" which is exactly what I did and I also made him okay me, some of those peanut butter tartlets that he okay, fine I love so much.

So, I guess my intent here was to write a rather long-winded-annoying-some-what-informative-post about potato salad, [that's right, no third world problems to address] and maybe somewhere down the road, the recipe for these incredible peanut butter tartlets [if you ask nicely].  

Few foods experience a worse photo opt than potato salad, but here it is...

Potato salad (with good mayonnaise)

 

(go here for recipe)