Kartoffelsalat

Well last week was tiring.  Julius was sick and then Patricia was sick.  Patricia beat Julius’ record of 3 days at daycare before getting sick, with only 2 days at daycare before getting sick!  I guess that’s something.  Probably not the thing we want, but still some thing.  That being said, I cannot tell you how much I love baby snuggles!  I am quite sad that I can’t walk upstairs on my lunch break and get my baby snuggles in.  Seriously, what is the point of working from home if you can’t snuggle babies?!  If you figure it out, let me know.

Patricia is SO CLOSE to walking.  She frequently will take several steps, but then resorts back to crawling.  She is so fast while crawling that I really can’t blame her.  Frequently I’ll turn my back for 10 seconds and she’ll have traveled from my side at the kitchen sink to the front hall and halfway up the front stairs.  At that point I shriek and sprint to the front hall.  Luckily it is obvious when she’s going up the stairs because she’ll giggle (which for Patricia is this ridiculous raspy laugh) and slap each stair as she goes up.  She wants me to chase her… What a wild thing.

My two wild things

Julius is enjoying his preschool.  He was very excited to go to preschool today and ran around the house jumping up and down when I told him today was preschool day.  I don’t think he was that excited for King Richard’s Faire the day before.  Actually I’m positive he wasn’t that excited.  The school is divided into two classes so he has two main teachers, Miss Megan and Miss Nicole.  He is working on learning their names (and all the names of the kids he plays with).  The first day he told us he had a teacher named Miss Negan.  We asked him if he meant “Miss Megan” and he emphatically said “no her name is Miss Negan” and that he couldn’t remember his other teacher’s name.  The next day he came home, excited, and announced he remembered both his teachers’ names. He told us one of his teachers was “Miss Megan” to which Will and I exchanged an impressed look, and that his other teacher’s name was “Miss Micole”.

I have been so busy with work, and Will has been doing Daddy daycare for the last several months so I’ve completely fallen off my cooking game.  You’d think that not having to commute would leave more time for me to make dinner and snuggle babies.  Alas, it really just means that now no one ever leaves their meetings to go home, so the “work day” is just forever, until you pass out or until your children start trying to eat the legs of your chairs, whichever comes first.  At least we have children to tear us away from work.  Imagine if you lived alone and just had to wait until you passed out from exhaustion every night?!

I’m trying to ease my way back into cooking, by seriously cutting corners.  This recipe is an adapted version of my grandma’s recipe – a family favorite.  Her version has measurements like “until it tastes right” and involves a lot more slicing.  The texture is slightly different, and my grandma usually serves her version at room temperature.  This version is lazy, so it requires no extra chopping or waiting for things to cool, but is still addictively delicious. (My grandma might be slightly offended that I call this recipe hers since it is technically her mother in law’s, which means the recipe is Bavarian, while she is from Thuringia which has an entirely different style of potato salad. After making it for 60 years though I think we can safely call it hers.)

Basically Grandma Kohm’s German Potato Salad (adapted by lazy grandchild #3)

• 6 medium potatoes (Yukon gold are the best)
• 1/4 cup minced red onion (my grandma used to use regular yellow onions, but the red onion gives a bit of color)
• 1/2 tsp celery seed
• 5 Tbsp vegetable broth (grandma used water or chicken broth)
• 2 Tbsp vinegar
• 1 Tbsp vegetable oil
• Salt & pepper to taste

1. Peel the potatoes, but don’t bother cutting out any eyes, you can do that later.  (Actually, to be honest, Grandma used to boil them with the skin on and peel the skin later, but that means you have to wait for them to cool, and I’m lazy.)
2. Place the whole peeled potatoes in a large pot and cover with an inch of water.  Add a few dashes of salt and pepper to the water, then crank the heat to high and bring to a boil.  Lower the heat to medium and simmer potatoes for 25 minutes or so (until soft).
3. While the potatoes are cooking, finely mince your red onion and place in the bowl you plan to serve your potatoes in.  Sprinkle the red onion with salt, pepper and celery seed and let sit.
4. The potatoes are done cooking when you can pierce them with a fork.  Remove from heat and pour off the water.
5. Remove any eyes, then move the potatoes to the serving bowl and rough mash (Julius likes to do this part).  Don’t mash them too well, you want some texture here.
6. Pour broth, oil and vinegar over the potato/onion mixture and mix well.
7. Correct for salt and pepper and serve warm.

Our vegetarian “German” meal – these sausage taste nothing like bratwurst but they are tasty.