Our garden is a rice krispy mess. We didn’t mulch this year and it’s going on three weeks without rain, so the ground is rock hard. We can’t even water (much) for fear the well will run dry. When I walk through the garden, which isn’t often anymore, it crackles and pops. The whole situation makes me cranky.

However, the potatoes are doing splendidly. Last year they all rotted after we dug them, and since I suspect the same thing will happen again this year (I’m across-the-board pessimistic when it comes to the garden), I’m making lots of potato salad while I can. I have two kinds that are my favorite: Simple Creamy Potato Salad and French Potato Salad.

I was raised on Creamy Potato Salad. My potato-loving mom taught me how to make it—more a process than a recipe—though she is forever changing her mind about what she likes, moving on to greener pastures, or creamier tatey salads, as it were.

The French Potato Salad entered my life last year when my aunt served it at her annual soiree. It’s a warm—or room temp—salad, no chilling necessary (though chilled leftovers are plentilicious), starring red-skinned potatoes lightly dressed in a white wine and chicken broth dressing.

There are capers, too. Perhaps they’re the French in the salad? I’m not for sure. But don’t be scared of them. They’re just pickled green peppercorns, and they’re kind of fun. (Note: this peppercorn-capering deal is a complete lie [see comments]. Disregard anything I ever say.)

Simple Creamy Potato Salad

Confession: the proportions are guesstimates.

To make this a one-meal dish, add chopped boiled eggs, some crumbled bacon or cooked ham, sliced and cooked carrots, peas, grated cheese, etc.

You may sub sour cream and/or plain yogurt for some of the mayonnaise.

3 pounds potatoes
½ onion, cut into small dice
1 rib celery, small dice
½ – 1 cup mayonnaise
1 teaspoon apple cider vinegar
1 teaspoon sugar
1 teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
½ teaspoon Dijon mustard

Put the potatoes in a kettle and cover them with cold water. Bring the water to a boil and simmer till the potatoes are fork-tender. Check frequently, removing the smaller potatoes as they finish cooking. (Otherwise, you’ll have potato smash. Which, come to think of it, is still quite good, but probably not the effect you’re after.)

When the potatoes are cool enough to handle, peel them. Chop them into ½-inch cubes, or smaller, and put them in a large bowl. Add the onions and celery.

In a small bowl, stir together the sugar, vinegar, salt, pepper, mustard, and ½ cup of the mayonnaise. Add to the potatoes and stir gently to combine. Add more mayo, salt, and pepper as needed. Chill and serve.

French Potato Salad
Adapted from the August 1999 issue of Bon Appetit, via my aunt, Dr. Perfection

3 1/4 pounds red-skinned potatoes, large dice
1/4 cup chicken broth
1/4 cup dry white wine
1/4 cup olive oil
½ cup minced onion (or 4 green onions)
2 tablespoons Dijon mustard
2 tablespoons drained capers
½ teaspoon salt
1/4 teaspoon black pepper

Cover the potatoes with water and simmer till fork-tender. Drain. (Sometimes I cook the potatoes whole and chop them later, unpeeled.)

In a separate bowl, mix together the remaining ingredients and toss with the potatoes. Taste to correct seasonings. Serve.

About one year ago: Tempero
About two years ago: Grace’s Vanilla Pudding, Apricot Pandowdy, What to do with brown bags.

A whole twenty-four hours all to myself. Pure bliss, sweet as honey. A balm for the weary soul. Glorious.

If you could have twenty-four hours alone in your house, what would you choose to do? My goal was to make believe I was a writer. For eight hours, I decided, I would write.

People do that, you know. They wake up in the morning, fix a cup of coffee, and then sit down at their desk and type till the sun goes down or their fingers fall off, whichever comes first.

I have a writer friend. Each day when her girls and hubby leave the house, she sits down and writes, six whole hours of words. Her fingers have been worn down to nubbins, just little bumps dangling from the ends of her hands.

So anyway, that was my plan: lose my fingers. Endurance writing. However, I knew from the get-go that I was doomed to fail, at least partially. We had overnight company arriving that night at 5, the same time that Mr. Handsome and the girls would be returning from their adventures, so there was last minute cleaning and cooking to attend to (despite the previous week’s spate of deep cleaning and nearly the a whole previous day spent doing more of the same). Plus I’m conditioned to only focus for two hours, three max, before switching gears. Extensive free time is not my norm. Therefore, I decided to write for a total of eight hours, but with breaks for cooking and cleaning. I made lists. I worked ahead. I cleared my schedule completely.

And then, a few minutes after Mr. Handsome drove off down the road with the giddy girls in tow, my mother called to see if I was ready for them to return my little boy. “Wh-wh-what? When?” I asked, choking back the rising panic. “You’re kidding, right?”

“Tomorrow morning,” she said brightly.

She wasn’t joking.

I started to cry.

I’m telling you right now, don’t anyone get between a mama and her much-anticipate and artfully arranged free time. We can handle peed-on sheets and written-on walls and permanent-markered lamp shades and broken cups and weird toe rashes and stinky farts, but tell us we can’t have our free time and things get reeeeal dicey.

Thankfully, bless her heart, my mother sensed that my desperation to be alone was greater than my son’s desire to return home. They’d keep him, she said. Write in peace, my dad said.

I finished washing the bathroom floor, soaked in a tub of cold water (it’s becoming an evening ritual, what with this fearsomely hot weather we’re having), wrote for two hours before bed, rose at 5:30 to go for a rulk (that’s run and walk, combined), and then did two hours of chores before showering and settling on the sofa for a whole day of writing, cold drinks and brownies standing at the ready to urge me onward.

In order to help me focus, I do all my writing in a word document with my internet turned OFF. I force my fingers to keep tapping, my mind to keep wrenching the thoughts from my brain (yes, a mind is different from a brain). It’s draining work, this mind-digging, and for an extrovert like me, it can be torturous. So I drink (iced!) tea and coffee, crunch on a peanut butter apple, notice my toenails need to be trimmed, admired my clean house, review the last minute food prep details, and then return reluctantly to the task at hand (ha! a pun! or it would be if I was hand writing—get it?): writing.

Now, in honor of my game, some quotes by writers about their craft:

“Writing is my vacation from living.” EUGENE O’NEILL (Ain’t that the truth.)

“Do not wait to strike till the iron is hot; but make it hot by striking.” WILLIAM BUTLER YEATS (What if it never gets hot?)

“The one great rule of composition is to speak the truth.” HENRY DAVID THOREAU (Humph. Like that’s easy.)

“If you want a trophy, go learn how to bowl. If you want to write, God help you.” CINTRA WILSON (I hate bowling. I take this as a good sign.)

“Writers have no real area of expertise. They are merely generalists with a highly inflamed sense of punctuation.” LORRIE MOORE (So if I’m no good with commas, what does this all mean?)

“The act of writing puts you in confrontation with yourself, which is why I think writers assiduously avoid writing.” FRAN LEBOWITZ (Hear! Hear! She speaks truth!)

“Finish the day’s writing when you still want to continue.” HELEN DUNMORE (My mom already done did teached me this.)

About one year ago: Raspberry-Lemon Buttermilk Cake
About two years ago: Angel Bread

Miss Beccaboo still isn’t reading.

The funny thing is, she can read. She reads whole sentences like “Jane rides the mule past the gate,” or “Bob had nine dimes and gave me five.” She knows the rules and how to sound out the words (something Yo-Yo never learned to do), but it still hasn’t clicked.

This bothers me more than I thought it would, perhaps because she’s a girl or maybe because she so badly wants to read. I don’t want her to know that I’m concerned, so I have to actively tamp down my worries and play it cool. I wonder if I should do something else, try a different method or drill her more often. I’ve even considered teaching her over the summer.

It is not like me to worry so. I believe that The Learning Time Table bestowed upon us by The System is one hundred percent bogus. I believe that there are different types of learners and different types of intelligence, all of which are equally valuable.

Considering all my noble ideals, my angst over my daughter’s reading, or lack thereof, is ironic. Instead of fretting, I should be thrilled that I have this incredible opportunity to put my beliefs into practice. I’ve always said kids learn when they’re ready and here I get to watch the amazing process up close, firsthand! Whoo-hoo!

While I’m not exactly thrilled by this opportunity, I have enough common sense to know that pushing Miss Beccaboo is not the answer. Even though I strongly believe this, and have lots of research to back me up, I have to repeatedly remind myself to stay calm. Otherwise, I fall victim to the senseless “shoulds” and “have-to’s” of our culture. And that’s pointless.

So when the school year ended, I steadied my resolve and determined, all over again, to simply let Miss Beccaboo be. I shelved the reading workbooks and turned her free. We don’t talk about reading (not that we discussed it much before, but I’m making a point to avoid the topic) and instead she does chores and plays, often combining the two in delightfully quirky ways as is her custom.

Technically, I’m not doing anything to help her read, unless you count our fun read alouds and the books on tape she adores. To proponents of our country’s (tortured) educational system, perhaps this approach seems negligent. But I beg to disagree. Sometimes doing nothing is the hardest thing to do.

And that’s something.

About one year ago: Cottage Potatoes
About two years ago: Orange Julius, Swiss Chard with an egg on top