My mom made the best potato salad. I asked her for her recipe once, but she never used a recipe. She gave me some guidelines, but I’ve lost them. Her big ‘secret, ha ha’ (she always said ‘ha ha’) was that she soaked something in vinegar before putting it in the salad. Dehydrated onions? Mustard seeds? I don’t remember. I’m guessing (since I’ve never made potato salad and I’m not looking at any recipes right now) that she diced a bunch of boiled potatoes and added Miracle Whip (because that’s what she liked – I prefer mayonaise; but I don’t know how that would affect the salad), chopped onions, chopped celery, chopped hard-boiled eggs, salt, pepper, dehydrated onions, mustard seeds, and vinegar. I don’t remember if she used mustard, but I’m guessing that if she used mustard seed she wouldn’t have.
I’ve never found any potato salad that was as good as mom’s. Dad used to make mashed-potato salad and I assume he got the recipe from mom, but it wasn’t the same. I’ve had some dill-flavoured potato salad from the market down the road. Good, but different.
On a semi-related note, there was a diner called Joy’s in Barstow in the early-70s. It was a lunch counter, and there was a wood-framed screen door with one of those overhead springs. It made that distinctive wooden-framed-screen-door-with-an-overhead-spring sound when it thwacked shut. ‘Joy’ made awesome macaroni-and-cheese salad. It was macaroni salad with chunks of cheddar cheese in it. Never found its like again. Joys had the best burgers too. No idea what made them different, but I’ve never had a burger as good.
