German potato salad

I have a bunch of posts in my head that will probably never see fruition, because no doubt I will forget them before I have a chance to write them. Things are INSANE here, what with all the end-of-year crapola. Yesterday I spent the day at T's field day. Today I had to run German potato salad to S's school for her German class's food day, and THEN had to go to T's school AGAIN for her end-of-year party. Whew! So, while I don't have time for much, I did at least photograph our preparation of the German potato salad and will now regale you with it's yumminess. [Shauna, it uses a WHOLE POUND of bacon, INCLUDING the grease!]

First you get a five-pound bag of red potatoes, cut them up into chunks and put them on to boil. While they are boiling, you want to finely chop about 3 stalks of celery.



You also want to finely chop some onion (I used one medium yellow onion) and fresh parsley (the curly kind, not the Italian - this is a GERMAN dish, after all). I don't have pictures of those two things. You also want to finely chop one pound of bacon. If you have a big, sharp, heavy meat cleaver (which I don't), you can even do this part prior to frying everything, which makes it easier. I tried with my butcher knife, and ended up with kind of a mess of bacon, but it all straightened out by the end. I just fried up the mess and then chopped up what didn't chop nicely before. But I'm getting ahead of myself.

Fry up the bacon. When it's nice and crisp, if you didn't before, pull it out of the grease and chop it up finely. To avoid burning the grease while you're doing that, throw the celery, parsley and onion in the grease. Throw the chopped bacon back in and stir it all around.



Mmmmmmmm. Don't you just want to eat that out of the pan with a spoon? Okay, then you take the potatoes, which are probably done by now, drain them and throw them in a bowl.



Then you pour everything from the frying pan over the top of the potatoes. Let it sit on the counter for two hours. Then toss it all together. Serve warm.



This recipe came from my step-father's step-mother (Yeah. Also he is no longer my step-father since he and my mother divorced.), who escaped from East Germany during the rule of the Nazis by crossing a river in the middle of the night with her brother. Neither could swim and she was the only one who made it. She then hid from soldiers as she made her way to safety. So this is probably pretty authentic. Even if it's not, it's damn good.