Oh no, not again

the &c. cable: some extremely minimal notes

However, I've run into an absolute wall of blockage, because every project I've done in the past [...ten-ish?] years has been a source of painful regret, the kind of thing where I desperately wish I hadn't done it at all. And so I'm having a hell of a time convincing myself to try even such a low-stakes idea as the one I've been working on.

I wanted to take a food thing to the recent social event, so I asked my mom if she could send me the recipe for the potato salad that she would often make for similar occasions. She texted me this picture. It's from a photocopied recipe book put together by my elementary school.

This recipe fascinates me, because it seems to involve a dressing that's halfway between mayonnaise and vinegar-flavored custard, but it's not something that anyone in my family has ever cooked.

"Uh, thanks!" I said. "But this isn't the recipe I was looking for. The one I remember definitely had bacon in it, and definitely didn't have eggs. Did you ever make a version with eggs?" (No. There is not a chance in hell that my mom ever made potato salad with eggs.)

She tried again. This time it was the right recipe. The confusion was somewhat understandable, because the right recipe was on a very similar piece of paper:

I cooked the potato salad, with some minor modifications, and then had a fairly major meltdown because the whole exchange turned out to trigger a bunch of painful flashbacks. It's an awful, familiar, recurring sequence.

-request for information -response with wrong information, which isn't immediately obvious, because deciphering it takes some effort -some back-and-forth where I try to explain that this isn't what I asked for -some gaslight-y attempts to convince me that of course it's what I asked for -it's clear that I'm impossibly difficult and picky and a nuisance -eventual acceptance of mistake, and I finally get the information I need, more or less -it still takes some work to decipher and interpret, and I end up exhausted and cranky about the whole process, so I don't enjoy it much

Anyway, I have re-written the recipe with my own notes and modifications, and here it is. Thank you for joining me in this therapy session.

German Potato Salad (updated August 2026)

1-1/2 to 2 lbs red potatoes (or other thin-skinned variety) 1/2 lb bacon some black pepper 1 medium onion, finely diced (red onion is good) 2 ribs celery, finely diced 1 tsp brown sugar 1/2 tsp salt (adjust according to how salty the bacon is) 2 tsp flour 1/2 cup water 1/4 cup cider vinegar (some dried parsley, if you don't have fresh)

1-2 green onions, thinly sliced 2 Tbsp parsley, chopped

Cut potatoes in half and boil in lightly-salted water until tender. Drain and set aside to cool. Fry bacon in a deep skillet and drain on paper towels. Discard excess bacon grease, keeping enough to generously cover the bottom of the skillet (a couple of tablespoons maybe? I do this by eye.)

Add pepper to bacon grease and stir. Cook diced onion in the peppered grease until translucent. Add diced celery and stir it until it's warm. Stir in brown sugar, salt, and flour and gently mix until all the little vegetable bits are evenly coated. Add water and vinegar, deglaze, and heat until thickened. If you're using dried parsley, add it now and stir well.

Cut the cooked potatoes into bite-sized pieces (you can leave the skin on) and add them to the mixture in the skillet. If you're using fresh parsley, add it now. Crumble about 2/3 of the bacon into the pan. Stir until all sides of the potato pieces are evenly coated.