recipe: potato salad, as my mother made it

The weather is getting warmer and my mind drifted to sunnier recipes like potato salad. I have had potato salad in restaurants and from a supermarket, but I have never liked them. The recipe my mother used (or created) is very simple and yet tastes a lot better in my opinion. I hope you too will like it.

Today i made some potato salad, so I will tell you the ingredients and portions for that. It's delish and should be about 4-6 servings.

3 good-sized potatoes, Russet or Yukon Gold are good. I haven't tried others.

1 stalk of celery

1 sweet pickle

1/2 medium sweet onion

4 large eggs

salt

pepper (I use the grinder, so it's a very fresh sharp pepper zing)

mayonnaise (or Kraft MiracleWhip if you prefer)

yellow mustard (you could try brown, but I can't guarantee success)

Preparing some ingredients:

1. Potatoes: peel them, cut out any bad spots, and wash off any dirt. Set them aside in a bowl.

2. Celery: clean, wash, dice it, and put aside in another bowl.

3. Sweet pickle: cut off the ends, then finely dice the rest, and add it to the bowl with celery.

4. Onion: cut half an onion, remove peel of the part you intend to use, finely dice, and add to the bowl with celery and pickle.

Begin cooking some things:

Note: Cooking the eggs and potatoes can be done simultaneously. The potatoes won't take as long, so there won't be a problem when you have to work with these later.

5. Eggs: Add 4 to a pot with warm/hot water. After they have warmed a bit, begin heating them to a boil. They'll be hard after about 11 minutes of boiling.

    Remove, drain off the hot water, move the eggs to another pot with cold water and ice cubes. Let them cool a while.

6. Potatoes: dice them. Some people like them in small dices. I prefer a variety of sizes, but it doesn't much matter. Make yourself happy.

    Toss 'em in a pot of water and boil on medium boil. Watch them carefully as you don't want them to over-cook and become mushy.

    Remove them when a knife point or fork tyne goes in easily, but without mashing that piece of potato. They must be chewable, but not mushy.

    Drain all the water and put them to the side. You can also leave them covered to absorb the steam. Hopefully you will be ready to use the potatoes when the steam has all been absorbed.

    A perfect piece of potato will be a bit rough around the edges when you toss it with a spoon. That indicates it's soft enough for our purposes. The rough edges will help hold mayonnaise.

    Don't worry if it doesn't seem perfect at this moment. Once you start mixing ingredients if can still be perfect.

So, we have the ingredients, the cooking, and now they need to be mixed properly!

7. Mayonnaise: In a good-sized mixing bowl, use a large mixing spoon to add some mayonnaise. Don't add too much. You can always add more later, but removing "too much" isn't easy.

8. Mustard: In that same mixing bowl add some mustard to the mayonnaise and stir it to check the color. It should be a light yellow throughout. Check for taste and suit yourself.

9. Potatoes: Add the diced potatoes and toss a little to coat the potatoes with the mayonnaise/mustard mix.

10. Veggies: Add some of the diced onion/pickle/celery mix. don't add it all at once. Only add a little and when you have precisely the amount you want you can toss out the rest.

    I find that too much pickle can ruin the taste and forgetting celery also kills it. Some people don't like or can't handle onion, so that's okay to 'forget'.

11. Okay, so we have the potatoes and mayo coating and other veggies tossed together. Now add some salt and pepper to taste. Add a bit, toss, taste a bit, repeat as needed.

    Don't add a lot as your guests may have different preferences.

12. Finally, peel each boiled egg and slice or dice (as you prefer). Mix some of the diced egg into the mixing bowl ingredients.
    Eventually, move your mixed ingredients to a serving dish and put the last sliced egg (or two) on top.

    I find that a teaspoon is very helpful for removing boiled egg shell. Just crack is on a counter-top a couple of places and then use the spoon to remove shell.

If you like you can sprinkle some paprika on top for the appearance you want.

Ideally, the amount of salt and pepper should be a bit on the light side, so each person served who wants more can add it to their taste.

Et voila !

Cancer, Immune Response, New System of Categorization, 6 Groups, etc.

It appears this new research has resulted in, or perhaps fleshed out, a new system of categorizing cancer cells/tumors based on their immune response.

http://www.cell.com/immunity/fulltext/S1074-7613(18)30121-3

Trump, Cohen, Russian Mafia

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/4/18/1758063/-Explosive-The-Russian-mafia-ran-U-S-operations-out-of-a-club-partially-owned-by-Trump-s-lawyer

There was another article just a minute ago, but now I can't find it. Oh well, there was a lot of overlap in the two.

Apparently Michael Cohen has known Alex Sater since childhood and is quite familiar with the Russian mafia in New York. Whether he's directly involved isn't entirely clear (as one might expect). Still, the number of connections between Donald Trump and Russians (mafia or Putin) grows and grows.

"It's your First Amendment right to terrorize."

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2018/4/17/1757827/-How-rogue-FBI-agents-Guiliani-and-diGenova-may-have-pushed-Comey-to-hand-Trump-the-White-House

This is a story about why FBI Director James Comey announced the investigation of Hillary Clinton and who forced his hand.You should take some time to read this and be patient. It takes a while to go through the bits and pieces which link the story together.

Here are a few articles which are referenced in the article:


https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/pizzagate-anatomy-of-a-fake-news-scandal-w511904

This one is about "Pizzagate".

https://truepundit.com/breaking-bombshell-nypd-blows-whistle-on-new-hillary-emails-money-laundering-sex-crimes-with-children-child-exploitation-pay-to-play-perjury/
This one is about the discover that Anthony Weiner's laptop computer had e-mails on it.


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/politics/special/clinton/stories/couple022798.htm

Here's an old profile from the Washington post about Joe diGenova and Victoria Toensing, (married couple and) lawyers of Sean Hannity and advisers to Donald Trump via FOX News.

There are some other links you can check. It's a sordid disgusting story of manipulation, insanity, gullibility, and lack of respect for real civic discourse and Democracy.

Privacy in America

I was watching a recent C-SPAN show which was/is part of a series on major Supreme Court cases. The one I watched was about a case in the 1960s  where the Court was considering the degree of privacy which a man in a telephone booth should expect and be granted by the state. Apparently the police wanted to tap the telephone booth line and catch the man who was a 'bookie'. At that time the precedent was to review each kind of place and situation to decide privacy rights and that of a man in a telephone booth had not been considered.

For young people today, a telephone booth was a small space, generally metal with glass panels, with a telephone owned by AT&T ("Ma Bell") and you could go into the booth, put money in the phone, dial a number and get service. There were no cell phones.

The lawyer representing the bookie was only out of college a short time and he had never been before the Supreme Court, so it was a new experience. Perhaps that was part of the reason he thought differently during the case and it may have allowed him to "think outside of the box". Usually a lawyer before the Court has to stick to the facts established at the lower court and to the arguments made in written briefs. In this instance he had an epiphany during oral arguments before the Court and it was powerful, so the Justices allowed him to argue it. The idea was contrary to established law, that Privacy rights were not located in the phone booth or home or office or automobile, but with the Person. The Founders of this nation had no idea about a telephone or automobile or cell phone and they had a clear idea that Privacy was about the person's personal papers and their body. This lawyer won the day. The Court decided in his favor with only one dissenting justice who continued to argue for the older concept.

This evening I was watching a C-SPAN show with two guests being interviewed about the Facebook case, Mark Zuckerberg, and Privacy. It was fascinating to see this same argument arising all over again and the male guest argued the OLD policy that privacy had to do with the kinds of information or data, where it was held, who had access to it, but not to the rights of the person to ALL data and information they had provided or generated.

As a minor digression, I would suggest that had Conservatives in America paid attention to the issue of Privacy over the last years since the Roe v. Wade decision, we might not have this difficulty today. We would realize that individuals' privacy is protected by the 4th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and that isn't related to where they are.

As a potential solution the two guests posited an idea, that there may need to be some government law which provides a foundation of Privacy for everyone's information not entirely unlike what they have done in the European Union. Isn't it ironic that the EU would have protected Privacy before America realized we already have such a law in the U.S. Constitution, if only Conservatives would stick to reading the plain text of the Constitution and apply that Law.

So, yes, we will probably need a federal government law, and probably a Supreme Court decision, to forcibly protect individuals' data and information from being made public or given to those who pay or given to political interest groups (such as Cambridge Analytica). Democrats have argued for decades that this is so. Perhaps now that Russians have meddled in our Democracy, some other people will catch on too.

Syria Attack

I was very happy the ban on use of Chemical Weapons was supported by the United States and allies. I watched some of the speeches and Q&As afterwards and thought they were very well done.

I don't know if Pres. Trump felt this would "wag the dog" to help him distract from other issues, but it was a good thing, a necessary thing to do, and I'm glad it was done.

Kudos to the militaries of the three nations involved. They worked well together and did great work.

Syrian Use of Chemical Weapons, Russian Protection

French language:
http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2018/04/12/berlin-ne-participera-pas-a-des-actions-militaires-contre-le-regime-de-bachar-al-assad_5284553_3214.html#meter_toaster

"Russia has asked the UN Security Council to meet on Friday to discuss the threat of US-led military action in Syria, diplomats said Thursday (12 April).

The request was submitted after Russian Ambassador to the UN Vassily Nebenzia said the priority was to avoid US-led strikes on Syria that could lead to a dangerous confrontation between Washington and Moscow. France and the United States threaten the regime of Bashar al-Assad and his Russian ally since the recent chemical attack in the rebel city of Douma, in eastern Ghouta, fell on Thursday at the hands of the Syrian army."

Perhaps the request is valid, but it should include also a discussion of the presence of Turkish and Russian military in Syria.