Mom's Potato Salad

Mom's Potato Salad ~ The perfect compliment to any summer meal!

I have fond & oh-so-wonderful memories of my Mom's potato salad! I remember helping her make this many, many times in our hot Southern California kitchen!! (No central air,... just an old swamp cooler that I fear only made us think that it was cooling down the house!) When I got older, I remember eating right after it was mixed up (Dishing ourselves a small bowl) with the warm potatoes and the cool pickles together in my mouth!! OHHH yummy!! I've made this recipe for my own family on many occasions and my oldest daughter and I both sneak our bites right after the mixing is done! In my opinion, it always tastes best at this time!

Ingredients:

1 - 10# bag of potatoes, boiled and peeled
1 dozen eggs, boiled, peeled and diced
1 - 15 oz. can sliced black olives, drained
1 - 2 oz jar diced pimento
1 - 16 oz jar sweet relish
2 cups mayonnaise
1/4 cup prepared mustard
2 Tb granulated or powdered onion
1 tsp granulated or powdered garlic
2 tsp salt

Directions:

(1) Cook your eggs and potatoes:

Peel potatoes and cut into 1" cubes. Boil until a fork easily pierces the cubes, being careful not to overcook as they will become mushy very quickly.

At the same time, hard boil the eggs. (Yolks will be completely cooked as opposed to 'soft-boiled' eggs) Once cooked, drain the hot water from the pan and fill it with cool water, allowing the eggs to set for a few minutes to cool down so they don't burn your fingers while trying to peel them. Once cooled enough to handle, peel and dice.

(2) Assemble everything in one giant bowl:

Once the potatoes and eggs are done, you can start putting everything together. My Mom had a huge Tupperware bowl that was light green in color. (I looked it up online and found a picture of a bowl like the one she used, the color was 'Spring Green'.) She always made her potato salad in this bowl. I can still remember it with its giant flexible lid (not green)... (Shown below)

This bowl was 12" across and appx 5 1/2" deep!!!

Place the 1" cubed potatoes and finely diced eggs in a giant bowl. Add the can of olives, drained. Next dump in the entire contents of each jar of pimento and relish. (You don't even have to start mixing it yet!)

Add the mayo and mustard right on top of everything, and try to sprinkle the onion, garlic and salt evenly over the surface of everything, just to make sure there are no clumps of spices later. (Nobody wants to bite into THAT MUCH flavor!!!!)

(3) Stir!! Stir until everything looks well distributed (mayo & mustard) and the potatoes look well coated. Don't forget to stir up from the bottom several times to get all those uncovered potatoes. Once it's completely mixed, it's time for a taste test. Some may want a bit more flavor. It's never exact since the bag of potatoes aren't always exactly 10 pounds. You may even feel its a bit dry... add more mayo, if you like. My Mom would always pour in some sweet pickle juice. Once she had it completely done, she would smooth the top and sprinkle paprika over the surface. I don't know if this was just an aesthetic thing, or a flavor thing... but she always did it as far back as I can remember.

Enjoy!!