Potato Salad

If it's going to get hot in the next few days, it is a gift to your future self to cook up some potatoes today for POTATO SALAD later, when you don't feel like cooking.

Potatoes
3 pound bag--red or Yukon Gold potatoes
Sprinkle--salt
Large pot--boiling water

Marinade
1/2 cup--olive oil

1/2 cup--apple cider or rice vinegar, with 1 Tablespoon balsamic vinegar OR 1/2 cup lemon juice
2 Tablespoons--wet mustard, either yellow, brown or rough brown
1 Tablespoon--tamari
1 teaspoon each--hot sauce (or 1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper) and vegan Worcestershire sauce

Texture
1 stalk--chopped celery or 1/2 teaspoon celery seeds
1 small--chopped onion or 3 stalks chopped green onions

Dressing
1/2 cup--Nayonnaise salad dressing, if desired

For a three pound bag of potatoes you will need to make about a cup of dressing.

I like red potatoes or Yukon Gold, but any potatoes will work. Scrub the skins and cut out any bad spots. The first difference about my potato salad is that I leave the skins on. You don't have to do this, but it is the most nutritious part of the potato, so it would be a shame to discard it. 

Cover them with water, adding a sprinkle of salt to it, and bring to a boil. Cook them until a fork inserted into the largest of them tells you they are done. The time will vary depending upon their size. If you are in a big hurry, you could either use a pressure cooker to cook them in a third of the time, or you could cut them into smaller pieces before you cook them. If you do this you will lose some of the nutrients to the cooking water, so you might then want to save it for soup stock or making bread or something like that. Freeze it for later, if nothing else.

Once the potatoes are just soft enough (not mushy and falling apart, or at least not ALL of them doing that), pour off the cooking water and let them sit until they cool a bit.

Meanwhile you can mix up some marinade in a glass measuring cup. I use about half a cup of olive oil and half a cup of vinegar to begin. You can use different sorts of vinegar, or even lemon juice. I like to use a half cup of rice vinegar and a teaspoon of balsamic vinegar. Apple cider vinegar is cheaper and tastes good, too. 

Add two Tablespoons of wet mustard. You can use a yellow mustard, or you could try a spicy brown mustard or a rough brown mustard like Roland's Moutarde a l'Ancienne, which keeps the seeds in.

Sprinkle some cayenne into the mix, and add a Tablespoon of tamari. Sometimes I add some hot sauce or vegan Worcestershire sauce (made without the anchovies) if I want.

Chop up a stalk of celery into small pieces and add to the marinade.

Chop up a small onion or three green onion tops and add to the mix.

If the potatoes are cool enough to handle, cut them up into a large bowl and mix up with the marinade dressing.

Refrigerate until you want to use it.

I like to add a half cup or so of Nayonnaise (a vegan mayonnaise) before I serve it, but other people in the family like it the way it is.

Along with a green salad and some kind of vegan burger you are now all set for a meal on a humid sticky day. You will thank yourself later.