Chapter 1: Divine Potatoes

Chapter 1: Divine Potatoes

A Chapter by Marie Anzalone

None of it might have happened if it weren't for Aunt Jane's famous potato salad.

 

Pennsylvania Dutch family gatherings always include a few requisite comestibles; including macaroni salad, sweet gherkin pickles, and, of course potato salad. No gathering is complete without potato salad. There have been fine weddings with beautiful views and truly loving hosts and scented rose petals and short ceremonies and wonderfully tasteful cuisine, and all the old-timers left saying, "Well, it was nice and all, but they didn't serve no potato salad."

 

The potatoes are always peeled; only foreigners, like people from suburban New Jersey, eat potato salad with the peel on. Growing girls are conscripted, starting about age 7, to peel the potatoes for their elders [betters]. Given the size of the average extended family, this can be quite the arduous undertaking; most little girls have memories of looking out the window on an otherwise beautiful summer afternoon and feeling like she was going to be an old maid by the time all the damned potatoes are peeled. And of, course, no little girl in the history of the state of Pennsylvania has ever peeled potatoes fast enough according to her older aunts and first and second cousins. "Will you hurry up already? The menfolks is gettin' hungry, you know"; with wooden spoons shaking the air and laughter echoing off the sweating July kitchen walls.

 

How the little boys, playing in the shade under the trees, were envied and hated! Small hands struggled with stainless steel mostly dull paring knives (you never trust a child with a sharp knife, of course) while faces grew red with exertion and impatience and the fact that summer kitchens are 98 degrees and 98% humidity and no-one whose husband wore a uniform to work in this part of the country ever owned an air conditioner until at least the 1990s. Small faces peered out windows while potato peels piled up, and aunts shrieked, "look how much potato you're wasting, will you!"

 

Finally, after what seemed like decades later, the potatoes were peeled, and hurriedly snatched by the aunts to be coarsely chopped and put into boiling water. Potato boiling is an art form, and the aunts had the timing to the second in the built-in internal clocks only women seem to have. Gossip about the grown kids and spiteful neighbors lowered to hushed tones while forks probed the flaky middles of russet potatoes, always russets, maybe whites only if russets were not available. Other varieties were too heavy or too mealy.

 

At this point the mystery starts; for each woman develops her own recipe and jealously guards it. Most involve the carefully sized potato chunks being run under cold water to stop the cooking but not too much so the potatoes are still warm enough. They are carefully drained, for nobody likes soggy potato salad. The semi-dried, still warm in the middle but stopped cooking on the outside cubes of mellow goodness are usually soaked in white vinegar for a carefully calculated quantity of time. They are then drained again, and a "dressing" is made: still warm whole hard boiled eggs, mashed; yellow mustard (never brown- too pretentious!); more white vinegar; mayonnaise; and diced gherkins; whipped into a froth and dumped unceremoniously on the potato chunks, followed by a loving tossing to properly coat the 'taters. Then, Hungarian paprika, and generous sprinklings of salt and pepper for taste, tang, and decoration.

 

Jacinta's mother never learned to make potato salad; apparently, she got the recessive of that gene from her mother. She politely ate it when at a gathering. Whoever was hosting the dinner; that person made the potato salad. Everyone else could bring whatever she wanted; usually the macaroni and tuna salad with celery, Jell-o mold, and various pasta dishes drowned in some sort of red sauce. Jacinta's mom brought fruit salad; fresh peaches and blueberries and small yellow supersweet plums and strawberries bursting at the seams and cantaloupe dripping with nectar; diced and put into a half-watermelon with cubes of sugary melty watermelon heaven.

 

Jacinta wasn't yet old enough to peel potatoes, and her face was a tanned brown sticky mess from eating her mom's fruit salad all day while looking for salamanders and insects in the dirt and grass. She had been playing tag with her cousins when everyone was called for "dinner". "It's too hot in the kitchen; let's eat under the trees", Aunt Jane said, and the adults, some 21 in all, piled into lawn chairs while the kids found spots to sit on the ground. Paper plates were loaded with food and passed around. Men had grilled burgers and dogs, and there was relish and cheese, mustard, and Heinz ketchup flowing like water.

 

"Mom, I'm full", Jacinta said, "Can I go play in the creek?"

"You didn't eat any potato salad", said Aunt Jane, frowning.

 

Jacinta didn't really want potato salad ("It's too hot, I'd rather eat fruit!"), but she politely and dutifully obliged and took a heaping spoonful from her beaming aunt.

"Look what a good little girl you have, Ginny!", Jane told her sister.

 

Three hours later, while her stomach churned and her intestines ached and her forehead beaded with sweat from acute food poisoning, Jacinta blacked out from pain and from induced vomiting. That is how, at four years old, she had her first experience with the spirits on the other side; which she remembered years later when she met her soul mate and realized she had always believed in God in some form or other.

 

 

 

 

 

 



© 2011 Marie Anzalone


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Featured Review

A very interesting beginning chapter, Marie. The description is spot on. I can actually feel like I'm there. Knowing a few of the PA Dutch folken, I found myself grinning through the whole read.

Aside from a few typos, the only thing that really sticks out is the last sentence. It doesn't seem to flow quite right yet. However, I know this is a first draft, and a damned good one at that.

Keep writing! This is excellent!

Posted 12 Years Ago


1 of 1 people found this review constructive.




Reviews

A very interesting beginning chapter, Marie. The description is spot on. I can actually feel like I'm there. Knowing a few of the PA Dutch folken, I found myself grinning through the whole read.

Aside from a few typos, the only thing that really sticks out is the last sentence. It doesn't seem to flow quite right yet. However, I know this is a first draft, and a damned good one at that.

Keep writing! This is excellent!

Posted 12 Years Ago


1 of 1 people found this review constructive.


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Added on June 3, 2011
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Author

Marie Anzalone
Marie Anzalone

Xecaracoj, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala



About
Bilingual (English and Spanish) poet, essayist, novelist, grant writer, editor, and technical writer working in Central America. "A poet's work is to name the unnameable, to point at frauds, to ta.. more..

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