Typically summer is when I make potato salad since salads and summer kinda go hand in hand. But, this recipe is scrumptious any time of year. It’s especially handy after Easter when I’m trying to make use of the dozens of eggs we dyed.

Since we always have plenty of fresh eggs, this recipe calls for a few more than an ordinary potato salad. It reminds of a potato salad and egg salad mash up.

INGREDIENTS

• 20 red potatoes
• 1 cup dill pickles, diced
• 7 hard boiled eggs, or steam ’em like I do
• 2 tablespoons yellow or white onion, diced
• 3/4 cup mayonnaise, store bought or homemade
• 2 teaspoons mustard
• 3 tablespoons pickle juice
• 2 teaspoons parsley, minced
• sea salt or kosher salt
• pepper
• paprika

THE POTATOES

Scrub potatoes.

Peel them, if you feel like it. Some days I give them a rough peel, some times I don’t peel them at all.

Slice potatoes in half.

Boil until fork tender. For me, that’s usually right around 22 minutes.

Drain.

Smash the potatoes – ideally with a potato masher. Mine, however, has ran away never to return apparently, so I use a fork. You are not making mashed potatoes, so a rough smashing will do.

If you opted not to peel your potatoes, you might want to pick out some of the larger skin pieces. That’s what I do.

ADDING THE OTHER STUFF

While the potatoes are boiling, I prepare the other ingredients.

I mince parsley, preferably the fresh stuff from our garden.

I dice the onion and pickles. I prefer little pieces, so I dice them fairly fine.

I use an egg slicer to chop the eggs.

When the smashed potatoes are cooled slightly, I stir in the mayo, mustard, pickle juice, salt, pepper and paprika.

Next I fold in the eggs, pickles and onion.

The final step is mixing in the parsley.

This recipe makes about 7.5 cups of smashed potato salad.

ENJOY!

Find a fork and dig in. It’s delicious!

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Easter is coming, which means it’s time to color eggs. Our hens are laying like crazy right now & we are getting at least a dozen eggs every day. I thought it would be fun to try out a couple different egg dye kits.

Hard Boiling Fresh Eggs

Hard boiling fresh eggs can be tricky. The shell tends to want to stick to the egg when you peel it. There are a variety of methods to try to fix that problem. The method that works best for me is adding 1 tablespoon of baking soda to the water. Farmer John prefers to steam the eggs.
Update: Recently, I too, have jumped on the steamed eggs bandwagon. The eggs really do peel perfectly. Click here to learn how to steam eggs.

Dye Kit #1

We’ve had these egg dying cups for years. It makes me happy to get them out each year. We have regular paas dye tablets in the cups.

Their fingers are usually just as colored as the eggs.

Our dark brown Marans eggs produced rich, jewel toned colors.

Dye Kit #2

The second kit we tried came with camouflage stickers. It also came with dye to color the eggs first. But, I just stuck the stickers on our brown eggs. I don’t love these eggs as much as I thought I would.

We’ve been incubating & hatching chicks, so naturally I had to take pics of them with the decorated eggs.

Dye Kit #3

The last kit we tried involved rubbing metallic paper on colored eggs. I love how they turned out, but the kit only decorated 5 eggs. There was one extra piece of metallic paper, but the glue was gone. I tried decorating the eggs first, before giving the metallic paper to my kids. It ended up being quite a chore for me to do it that I never ended up letting my kids try. So although they are pretty, they are not worth the effort.

My Favorite

When it comes right down to it, I don’t need the fancy dye kits. My favorite eggs are the one that are plain & only one color. Since the eggs from our chickens have a range of colors, one set of dye tablets produced a large variety of colors.

Wishing everybody a Happy Easter!

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I got ducks!!! I’ve been wanting ducks. But when our chicken population continues to grow & grow, the last thing we need are more feathered friends simply because I want them. The other day Farmer John mentioned how he would like to get a duck that eats slugs. We have Mr. Duck, but he’s not much of a slug eater. The next day I went & found us some ducks… before the hubby changed his mind. They are 4-5 week old Welsh Harlequins & I love them already.

I tried getting an Easter themed photo of the ducks. However, they thought running around quacking was better than standing/sitting still for a pic. Thankfully, I caught this shot mid quack.

It is such a warm, fuzzy feeling watching the little ducks play in our pond.

They just keep playing, swimming, drinking & cleaning themselves. Happy, happy ducks!

Occasionally they would come out of the pond, but not for long. They kept going back for more. Eventually, I had to tell them play time was over.

This poor little guy must have been the runt. He’s smaller than the other two & has wonky legs. They should not be turned in so he’s stepping on his own foot. Supposedly swimming is good exercise for his legs & will hopefully improve the wonky-ness.

I him, wonky legs & all.

Chicks hatching & bringing home ducklings says Spring really is here! Happy First Day of Spring 2013!

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