Diane White
The Saga of the Pandemic Potato Salad – Comfort Food Through the Generations
What does potato salad remind you of? To me potato salad is summer days, picnics, family, tailgating at the beach. Happiness.
I am calling this story the pandemic potato salad saga which reached out and brought comfort from the past.
At the beginning of the Covid-19 stay-at-home order, the call went out across the family network. S.O.S! My middle sister wanted to make potato salad. Not just any potato salad – the potato salad from our childhood. The way our Polish immigrant grandmother made it. So, I looked through my recipe files – something else I’ve been meaning to organize. And yes, I found it! Not only do I have it, it is handwritten, in my grandmother’s hand with notes lovingly explaining how to make it, addressed to her daughter-in-law, my mother.
Who was she, my grandmother, to remind us of comfort at this time? Katarzyna (Catherine) Walczak White was born in 1909. She emigrated from Andrychow, a small town in southern Poland, in 1913. She was four years old. (More…)
