I just made my grandma's potato salad for the 100th time

I was cleaning out my recipe box and found the card, all stained with vinegar and paprika. I started counting the little tally marks I make on the back each time I make it. There were exactly 100. It hit me that I've made this dish for every big family thing since she passed away 12 years ago. The recipe is simple, just boiled potatoes, hard boiled eggs, celery, and her special dressing of mayo, mustard, and a splash of pickle juice. Making it that many times means I've fed a lot of people at a lot of picnics and potlucks. It's weird how a bowl of potatoes can feel like a direct line to someone. Does anyone else have a dish they've made so many times they've lost count?

3 comments

3 Comments

shanem375d ago

My mom's meatloaf is like that for me. I must have made it five hundred times by now. The recipe card is basically just a piece of cardboard with grease stains. I make it when I'm sad, when we have company, just because it's Tuesday. It's the first thing I ever learned to cook, and it always makes the house smell like home. That connection is real.

jake6385d ago

A hundred times is a lot of potato salad. Maybe it's just food, and we put all the feelings onto it because we miss people. ShaneM37's meatloaf might just be meatloaf after the five hundredth time, you know? The recipe card gets dirty because we're messy cooks, not because it's magic.

daniel4743d ago

Yeah and it's not just food, it's like the worn spot on a staircase or a coffee mug you always grab. We build our whole sense of normal out of these tiny, repeated things. The ritual is what holds the feeling, not the object itself.