'German' potato salad recipe

The potato salad tasted pretty good last night. I considered also eating it for breakfast this morning. But I managed to wait until lunch. And it really is much better the next day. Well, it doesn't have to be the next day - at Christmas Mum usually makes it in the morning and it's great by lunch time. I think the sour cream and the other parts of the dressing need a little time for the flavours to combine fully.

I had to improvise the potato salad from memory last night - I know I've copied the recipe before but I don't know what happened to it. I dropped round to see my parents this afternoon and copied it again. Mum cut it out from a magazine many many years ago, so I don't think there should be any problem sharing it here.

Sour cream potato salad

The introduction to the recipe claims this is a German style potato salad.

Ingredients

6 medium potatoes
1 medium onion, finely chopped
1¾ cups beef stock (I use vegetable stock)
4 tablespoons white vinegar (apple cider or other vinegar of your choice works too, perhaps not balsamic though!)
5 tablespoons salad oil
2 teaspoons prepared mustard
white pepper and salt
½ cup sour cream

Cook unpeeled potatoes in boiling salted water. (We steam them). Do not overcook or they will not keep their shape in the salad. Peel the potatoes while still hot (we don't bother) and cut into slices. Place in a bowl with the onion.

Bring the stock to the boil with the vinegar added, and while boiling pour over the potatoes. Marinate until almost all the liquid is absorbed, about 20-30 minutes. Pour off any excess liquid (this might depend on the type of spuds - I had to pour off a lot of liquid) and gently fold in the oil mixed with the mustard.

Taste, and season with white pepper and salt if necessary. Lastly, fold in the sour cream. Serve at room temperature, garnished with parsley or other fresh herbs. (It's perfectly nice refrigerated too, if you are concerned about leaving food in the 'danger zone' temperature-wise.)

Serves 8-10 (Ha! Not necessarily)

Update in response to some comments:

Salad Oil: I always though 'salad oil' meant a simple oil-based dressing like French or Italian. When I looked it up, most sites said it is simply any oil that can be used in salad dressing. Which makes sense for the recipe as you can season it separately and it is also already strongly vinegar-flavoured so you wouldn't want to use a strongly vinegar-y dressing. Though I personally have a huge appetite for vinegar, I know some don't like it too strong.

Raw onions: I never eat raw onions as I hate the way the taste stays with me for so long. I find they are blanched enough by the boiling stock marinade that they are ok in this recipe. However, I have also used shallots (green onions/spring onions) which look nice and taste milder.

I won't ask for much this Christmas. I won't even wish for snow

I've had a busy, excited, planning brain all week with ideas for things I'll make (we have a $10 rule for gifts in my family).

But tonight I'm really getting into the spirit of Christmas. I'm making potato salad.

I am generally a fan of potato salad and will happily eat most versions (though not, of course when they ruin it by adding bacon or ham). But Mum's potato salad is far and away the best possible version. I believe the recipe she has used for years is called German potato salad. It has no mayonnaise. It is tangy and savoury, thanks to the unusual step of marinating the cooked spuds in a mixture of apple cider vinegar and stock.

Each year Mum raises the question of what foods we might like to eat for Christmas lunch. My answer is always the same - all I need is the potato salad. I usually work my way through more of it than anyone else. Well, they do fill up on the meat. And then at the end of the day I'm sometimes persuaded to take the leftovers home as well.

Anyway I decided not to wait until Christmas and make some myself. I'm off to pour off the marinade and mix in the dressing and sour cream right now, and then eat!

Here's one I prepared earlier

Here is the process I follow to make a felted Christmas ornament.

1. Knit

I knit these ornaments using exactly the same concept as my pod pattern. I vary the number of stitches cast on, the needle size, and the number and spacing of increase and decrease rows to suit the wool, and to get what seems like a nice spherical shape - allowing for a little more vertical than horizontal shrinkage.

2. Crochet a circle for the top.


3. Felt both pieces.


4. While it's wet, stuff with a plastic bag and spend some time rolling it into a nice spherical shape.


5. Once it's dry, pull out the plastic bag and then apply decoration.



The embroidery technique in both of these pictures is couching. I use intermittent stitches in grey sewing thread to hold down the silver thread. You can only see the sewing thread if you look pretty closely. I decided to try couching because I knew from trying to cross stitch with metallic thread years ago that it can be a massive pain with all the fraying and kinking. I can put up with it to directly stitch simple shapes like the stars/asterisks in the picture below, though.


6. Fill with polyester stuffing. As planned earlier, I've also been keeping all my wool ends in a jar and using them as stuffing as well.


7. Poke a large jump ring through the top piece.


Then I stitch the top piece inside the rim of the main piece, and use a few stitches to make sure the jump ring is held securely. Sewing felt pieces together is so satisfying because you can virtually make the stitches disappear into the felt.

8. Thread onto a silver ribbon. Done.

Still November, and more to come!

I'm still working on Christmas ornaments. Craft ACT has sold a few and asked me for more.

The red and green one above, on the left, is Noro Silk Garden Lite, which didn't felt as well as I'd hoped. I've since knit another one with a strand of something reliable and I'm hoping that will make a firmer, feltier fabric. The one on the right (another angle shown below) is a combination of Happyspider's Sour Raspberry (I have gotten a lot of mileage out of that delightful skein, and there's still some left) and that raspberry-coloured Cleckheaton Merino Spun again.

Below, on the left, Patons Jet. The one on the right is Araucania Nature Wool (green/blue variegated) and Lincraft Cosy Wool (blue).



And these are in the always wonderful Sean Sheep Armytage.

I just stood there whistling

This is my sister's necklace which I mentioned the other day, made from a combination of the felted beads I made for her for Christmas last year, and some wooden beads she had from another necklace. The two types of beads actually work together really well - I think this photo makes them look more different in colour than they look in real life. And because it is threaded on ribbon - she has done this with a few bead necklaces - she can tie it to whatever length works on the day.

D.I.Y. traveller

Thanks for all the encouraging comments on the Christmas ornaments. I was happy with how they turned out, and the reactions I've been getting, especially as I charged into the project without being terribly confident about my embroidery skills. I'm certainly going to make some more soon.

This week I went to Sydney for a conference. I'm usually a fairly efficient packer but I was still in a bit of a daze from a busy bauble-making weekend. So the night before was a bit scattered. While wandering from room to room trying to figure out which clothes to take, I managed to put together my recycled luggage tag. I used a clear plastic piece cut from a dishwashing liquid bottle, and a patterned plastic piece that came with some hairclips. It didn't take too long - the most time-consuming part was punching holes around the edges with an awl. A hole punch would have been quicker, but mine was not strong enough to go through the plastic.

The really cute luggage tag my sister gave me broke a few trips ago, and in the time that I've been thinking about making this I've seen several that I could have bought at clearance prices. So making this didn't really save more than a dollar or two. But it was satisfying to make something from materials that were destined for landfill or the recycling bin (I'm not sure the hairclip piece was even recyclable). It may not last quite as long as a good quality commercial one, but it won't be hard to make another one. It survived this trip unscathed, anyway, which is a good start.

Apologies to those who don't appreciate this sort of thing in early November

I'm not usually in Christmas mode this early, either. But Craft ACT is launching new hand made products for Christmas this Thursday so I got into gear a few weeks ago.

Do you read what I read?

The rest of the trilogy

Terminator gene, and The life lottery, by Ian Irvine.

I liked both of these much more than the first one. I think I liked the characters more. Jemma's daughter Irith was more likable than the young Jemma in the first book (older Jemma is pretty cool though). Maybe I also got more accustomed to the author's style. All the people are pretty direct and straight-talking. It is unusal for such action-y books to really grab me like that but they sure did - I really enjoyed all the action, danger, and wondering where it was going next. I also found the near-future of severe climate change to be a very compelling scenario to explore. I am so glad I took a risk on continuing the series - I proabably wouldn't have on the basis of the first one, except I had already bought the third one, so I thought I might as well keep going.

Theme reading

Among other things, I seem to be doing a 'school shooting books' theme this year. I've read We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shriver, The hour I first believed by Wally Lamb, and Nineteen Minutes by Jodi Picoult. Still to come - Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre, and the one that (maybe) started it all - Rage by Stephen King. I think I may well have read that long ago but I'm not sure. And I could also watch the movie Elephant by Gus Van Sant. Any other suggestions?

Shared reading

I still keep a list of each book I read, down in the sidebar on the right hand side of my blog. (I need to make that linkable, don't I?) I don't automatically review everything - since there's so much crafting to be done - but if you're interested in a particular book, especially if you've read it too, please drop me a line.

You buckle with the weight of the words

My sister's Christmas present last year was a box of pink felted beads and a promise to make them into a necklace for her. It took maybe six months for us to get around to that. It ended up being ridiculously simple - we just threaded them on a matching length of very narrow ribbon and called it done. And any day now I'll get photos to show here.

Meanwhile, last Friday morning I was hit with the urge to make a new necklace, and to make it before work. It was a day when I had to walk the dogs, which usually leads to me being not particularly early for work. Who am I trying to kid, I am hardly EVER particularly early for work. Anyway I was walking the dogs, thinking about this necklace and how crazy it would be to make it to wear that very day, and how I would of course do no such thing. On arriving home I would hurry to feed the dogs and get dressed and get to work quick smart.

Next thing I know, I'm sitting at my messy home desk, all my jewellery findings scattered across it, with a length of chain looped around my neck, attaching things to the ends.

Well it is a very simple design. One end of the chain sports one of my favourite ever earrings. I lost its mate many many years ago and it has been sitting around waiting for a new purpose in life every since.

The other end has one of the leftover raspberry felted beads, with a little cube at its base.

Then I used a jump ring to attached the two hanging parts together. There is no clasp as it fits over my head. Done.

It's exciting for me because I have been wearing all my necklaces around the same length (short but not choker) for-EVER. I've been inspired recently by Erin from Work with what you've got with her long (and combination) necklaces that she often makes herself.

But I'll have a sailor laddie and dye my apron blue

This evening I attended Re-loved 2 at Craft ACT, a fashion parade with all the clothing made from recycled clothing and fabric. There was quite a range of styles, with several different designers involved. Some was more to my taste than others (of course), but the show was definitely worth a look.

A similar thing goes on, at a more personal level, with Wardrobe Refashion where people pledge to avoid buying new clothing for a set period, instead renovating and remaking existing stuff to satisfy the need or desire for different clothes. I've also recently come across Project Remake, a new group in Canberra who are exploring ways to recycle textiles. And I've been thinking about what textiles and other materials I can reuse and repurpose in the things I make.

Not the best photo but this shrug made from a kimono was gorgeous.

My pears are stuffed before felting so they need a stuffing that doesn't felt, dries quickly and can stand up to rough treatment. I've been using polyester stuffing or wadding (a bit firmer) - both probably quite environmentally unfriendly, though I haven't researched it yet. At times I have also used the stuffing from old worn-out cushions. Now that I think about it, there are probably a couple of misshapen pillows in the cupboards that could be sacrificed this way too. Whatever I use gets such a thorough washing with hot water in the felting process that I don't think there could be any hygiene issues.

This week I'm working on some prototypes for a different stuffed item and this time I'm planning to felt them before stuffing. So I've started keeping little fabric scraps and all the wool ends from various knitting projects, to be used as stuffing.

Of course there is my new button stash, much of which has come from op shops. Some of them are scratched or damaged, which make for an interesting look - but then some of them are better covered up. Some of the covering fabric was from a bag of leftovers and scraps that came to me from a friend leaving town (along with a sewing machine).

Once upon a time I did some knitting with cut-up t-shirts. I thought I might make a shopping or lunch bag with the resulting tough, thick fabric, but I didn't persevere as I didn't enjoy the feel of knitting it, at all. Many people do successfully knit with fabric strips (making floor rugs, for example). Alwen at Lost Arts Studio has instructions for how to spiral-cut a t-shirt. She was using the strips for weaving, too.