The Minnesota Farm Woman

When we got married nearly 40 years ago, I was a young bride and not such a great cook. Oh, I could throw together a hotdish (aka casserole for my southern readers) or a dessert, but I had a lot to learn. Unfortunately for HIM, I seemed to learn better by my mistakes. I cried the time I tried to make hard boiled eggs by putting ice cold eggs from the fridge into boiling water and ended up with scrambled soup. The cookies that I rolled too large and put too close to each other on the cookie sheet until they became one giant cookie were not pretty, but tasted all right.  I proudly served a big plate of homemade barbecue baked beans and cornbread, thinking they were the same as his beloved pinto beans. I didn’t cry, because even though he disliked baked beans, he ate every bite. (I admit to sniffling a little bit when he gently suggested that I ask his mother how to make them.)  I didn’t even admit for years that I nearly flunked piemaking in high school Home Economics class because our group’s banana cream pie turned into banana cream soup due to an improperly sealed meringue. Miss Huset gave us a “D” because it tasted good, and we sat around the table and ate it with spoons. I haven’t made meringue since, and I rarely make a pie from scratch. (I have been known to wheel and deal and barter for a homemade apple pie, since it is HIS favorite next to chocolate pie with MERINGUE.) My cooking skills have improved over the years, thank goodness.  One food that I have prided myself on has been my potato salad. Making potato salad is an art, and since I have always gone by taste, there is no recipe,  but it is a combination of the way both HIS mom and my mom made it. It is not hard to make, but tedious. The potatoes have to be sliced just so after they have cooled. Not too thick and not too thin. Just a touch of onion, and not too much celery. Finely diced pickles or pickle relish, and the dressing made with real mayonnaise and mustard and thinned with a little milk. Salt, pepper, and celery salt are added, and hard boiled eggs are folded in as well as sliced on top. (See how NOT to boil an egg, above.) I always made a lot, but personally didn’t like it after the first day, so he would always eat it until it was gone. All was right with the world until I gave up potatoes in my diet. I  kept on making potato salad for HIM, because he enjoyed it so much, or so I thought. One day, out of the blue, HE informed me that I didn’t have to make it any more. “I don’t really like potato salad all that much.” Wait. What?? Thirty nine years of eating potato salad and he informs me that he doesn’t like it! I wonder what other secrets he is keeping from me?