Warm Potato Salad

There is something that I don’t think I have mentioned yet. I don’t like eggs unless they are an ingredient in a baked goods batter. Seriously, I can’t stand them. They smell terrible and have a variety of repulsive textures that I find nauseating. So it may seem a little surprising that I selected the warm potato salad recipe. I did so with the thought of egg substitution in mind. The thought of a potato salad that was not sullied by the presence of those vile chunks of egg I still find appealing. However, this is not my greatest culinary triumph. In fact, several things about it equaled a barely edible result!

Of course, I decided to substitute the eggs (wretched) with an avocado (delightful). I started off with the potatoes. I don’t have a steamer basket so I decided to microwave the potato chunks. This worked just fine but I think the two potatoes resulted in vastly more potato chunks than are required for this recipe, which is where things started to go wrong. I mixed up the oil, vinegar and Dijon mustard. I didn’t have any red wine vinegar so I used balsamic. I have Dijon mustard but it is Dijon honey mustard, so I increased this to two teaspoons in order to give it some kick. I don’t think these two ingredients really go together, but I pressed on.

Once the potatoes were out of the microwave I added them to the oil/vinegar/mustard mixed and stirred them up to coat. At this point, I thought there might not be enough sauce for the potatoes but wasn’t sure. I cut up half the red onion and the avocado and added them to the mix. Since the balsamic vinegar is brownish, it gave the avocado a brown tinge. I added salt and pepper and stepped back. This is not something you will see plated in a restaurant.  I crossed my fingers and served it to my Mom. My poor Mom, she really doesn’t deserve this kind of treatment.

It wasn’t terrible, it just wasn’t good. For one thing, there was way too much onion in this mix, which means if I used the correct ratio of potatoes it would’ve been even more overpowering. I think they made my Mom’s eyes water (sorry Mom)! As always, she tried to be supportive and said it was alright. I ate some. Ew. Somehow the fact that the potatoes were warm made it worse. To top it off, except for the onion, it was bland. My two year old ate two bites and then refused the rest. At least she shows signs of good taste and good sense! I saved the considerable leftovers and tried them cold the next day. Normally I do not like to waste food, but this went in the trash. Ah failure, I am so familiar with you! It was truly tragic to waste a perfectly good avocado.