Day 34, Year 2: Mom’s Potato Salad in Fiji
Date: Monday, May 28, 2007
Weather: Partly Cloudy Day
Location: Suva, Fiji
Today was actually another quiet day and we have yet to have an evening “incident” as we had last night. This is good. It was a holiday here, so not much was open in town. Mark did go into town with Gary of Heartbeat (New Zealand) to make a bid on an auto pilot for him on e-Bay. Gary doesn’t have a PayPal account and we do, so he asked if we could help him out. The bidding is over tomorrow and I doubt if he gets the auto pilot unless we go back in and make a last minute bid, but at least we tried for him. While Mark was gone, I worked on health insurance paperwork. We still have not been reimbursed for all of the costs associated with my broken leg last season and we are dealing with Mark’s coming of age and the Medicare issues. He will be 65 in July and that changes our currrent health care status. In the afternoon we did the requisite amount of work for the day–more stainless polishing and reinforcing the windvane steering by connecting the struts that hold the windvane steering mechanism together with through-bolts.
At the end of the day, we went over to Scot Free II to talk with Donna and Gerry. Since tomorrow might be our last full day here and we don’t know when we will see them again, we wanted to spend a little quality time together. They are a very nice couple. Scot Free is a 36-foot steel boat. Even though it is small, they have rebuilt the interior and have an amazing amount of storage space. They will be here in Suva for another week or so as parts for their broken auto pilot were sent to Britain instead of Fiji. Just a small error in geography! Like us, they are headed to Australia at the end of the season and are going to Vanuatu from here, so I’m sure we will see them again along the line. They are also signed up for the Sail Indonesia Rally for next year, as are we, so I know we will see them again next season.
Marie and Paul of Ranger return tomorrow and I plan to have everyone over for a dinner. In honor of Memorial Day, I plan to grill hamburgers and serve with potato salad that I made today. I must digress here to tell the “potato salad” story. My mother’s potato salad was one of her specialty recipes. I never make it because it takes so long, but for some reason I decided that I just had to make it today. I looked for the recipe and surprised even myself by finding not only the recipe, but the original in my mom’s handwriting. I have no idea why I have that here on the boat in Fiji, but I do. I first delighted in reading the recipe written in a style only my mother could write–not as efficiently written as it could be, but it has her voice. She died over 10 years ago, but she lives on through many of her hallmark recipes. I realized that I have never made this potato salad on my own. I have done it with my mom, years ago, and with my brother and sister more recently, but today’s attempt was my first solo. It is the dressing that is tricky. This recipe was around before there was such a thing as potato salad dressing for sale in stores. These days, it is probably not time efficient to make such a dressing, unless you are in Fiji where they have no potato salad dressing. I’m really glad I had the recipe and I have to say that I was successful. The potato salad tastes almost like my mom’s. I’m going to transcribe my mother’s recipe here for posterity. They don’t sell sweet jherkin pickles in this part of the world, so I substituted with olives. And I don’t have a double boiler, but I made one by putting canning jar rings in the bottom of one pot and placing a smaller pot in that one.
Ollie Martin’s Famous Potato Salad (as written by my mom sometime in the 1980’s)
Cook about 8 medium-sized potatoes. I cook mine in the jackets. You can tell when they are done by testing with a fork. If you have trouble getting the fork to go through the potato, you will have to cook until the fork goes through easily. Try not to overcook them or you won’t be able to dice them as they will be more like msshed potatoes. After you get them diced, put in a large bowl. Then add:
1 cup diced celery
1 cup diced onions
1/2 cup diced sweet pickles
1 small jar pimento/diced
Sprinkle about 1 tsp of salt and a little pepper over this. Add 3 hard boiled egggs, diced. Then pour on dressing and stir gently until it is well mixed. Sprinkle some paprika over the salad, if you prefer.
Boiled Dressing
1 cup sugar
1 cup apple cider vinegar
1 cup wter
2 eggs
2 tbs flour
1 tsp salt
Mix the salt, sugar, and flour good. Mix eggs lightly with a fork. Add to the flour, sugar, and salt misture. Then add the 1 cup water and mix well. Add 1 cup vinegar. Slowly mix well, stirring constantly. It is better to use a double boiler, but if you use a sauce pan, put on low heat and cook about 8 or 10 minutes. When done add 1 Tbs oleo. It (the dressing) is supposed to be medium thick. You can add about 1 tsp of prepared mustard after this cools, and also add some mayonnaise. I usually do. The boiled dressing isn’t hard to make, but you do have to keep stirring it from the beginning or it will curdle.
