Dear Reader,
After earning her first rejection at the age of thirteen, today’s guest, bestselling author Sandra Byrd has now published fifty books. Sandra continues to earn both industry acclaim and high praise from readers everywhere. Her work has received many awards, nominations, and accolades, including the Historical Novel Society's Editor's Choice award, two Christy Award nominations, Two Library Journal Best Book selections, and inclusion on Booklist's Top Ten Inspirational Books of the Year list. Her new book is Heirlooms.
Sandra loves walking, the beach, cooking and baking, photography, watching Escape to the Country, Fake or Fortune, and Chef's Table, as well as spending time with family and friends--real and fictional! Please visit www.sandrabyrd.com to learn more or to invite Sandra to your book club via Skype or drop her a note.
Her new book is Heirlooms: Answering a woman's desperate call for help, young Navy widow Helen Devries opens her Whidbey Island home as a refuge to Choi Eunhee. As they bond over common losses and a delicate, potentially devastating secret, their friendship spans the remainder of their lives.
Be sure to enter Sandra's book giveaway. (Details are at the end of her column.)
Kitchen Heirlooms
My grandmother made the best potato salad. Her recipe included the usual suspects: potato, mayo, mustard, green onions, and spices. She also included lots of eggs, which was fantastic; I know it's potato salad, but I think everyone loved the eggs as much as the potatoes--if not more. Of course, we'd eye the serving bowl to ensure no one greedily took more than their fair share.
My grandma prepared her potato salad for our family vacation each summer. This year, I became a grandma (Mimi!) for the first time. It's a beautiful full-circle epiphany to realize that I am now the grandma bringing potato salad to our family's vacation.
Have I changed her recipe? Yes, I have. I love sliced olives in my potato salad, and I don't like mustard. So I have given this recipe the taste of my hands. In my book Heirlooms, I explore the Korean concept of son-mat or "hand taste," where a woman gives her dishes a signature touch, the taste of her hands. I expect my daughter and granddaughter will tweak my recipe when it's their turn to bring potato salad to the family vacation. My grandmother left me the heirloom of a love of cooking and warm memories of being cooked for. I will pass that heirloom on, too.
Sandra's Five-Ingredient, Five-Star Potato Salad
1 5-pound bag of russet potatoes, halved if they are large
2 cups Best Foods (Hellman's) mayonnaise from a freshly opened jar
1 10-ounce jar of sliced, pimento-stuffed green olives, with brine
10 hard-boiled eggs, peeled
crisply fried bacon on the side
salt and pepper to taste
Rinse the potatoes and put into a large pot. Fill the pot with salted water until the potatoes are just covered. Bring to a boil, and then boil until a fork stuck in the middle of each potato easily comes out, about 20 minutes after the water begins to boil. Drain, rinse, and cut into bite-size chunks. (Not too small or you'll have mashed potatoes!)
Quarter the boiled eggs into pieces about the same size as the potato chunks. Put into a large bowl with the chunked potatoes.
Mix the mayo and the jar of olives, including all the brine. Fold into the potato-egg mixture.
Cool several hours, covered, before serving. Season with salt and pepper if you like, and serve the bacon on the side, crumbled.
It's even better the next day--if there are leftovers!
My publisher generously offered to give away two copies of Heirlooms to readers. To enter the raffle, please email me at sandra@sandrabyrd.com. Tyndale House Publishers will notify the winners.
-- Sandra Byrd
Thanks for reading with me. It's so good to read with friends.
Suzanne Beecher
Suzanne@DearReader.com
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