Potato Salad Is The New Stalin
May 31st, 2005
Don’t tell me politics and food don’t go together.
The fact is this: just like Stalin took control of the Soviet Union and turned that country into a true economic and social power based on harsh control and political intimidation, so too has potato salad done to Memorial Day and other holiday side dishes. By the time Stalin was done working over the USSR, he had created a single-minded power. So too, has potato salad.
To illustrate my heady point, let me ask you a question. If you were going to take one side dish to a BBQ, which side dish would you take? Most of you would say potato salad. Sure, some of you would say cole slaw or maybe baked beans, but really — who are we kidding?
Potato salad is the Communist Russia of modern day side dishes.
It is mainstream. It is the first thing people think of when they think of picnic, BBQ or holiday side dish. It is made of things that are also widely accepted and ingrained into our food thoughts like mayo and mustard.
It conforms to all other main dishes that it partners up with. Potato salad works alongside hot dogs, hamburgers, cold pasta dishes and even chicken. It’s these things that have caused me to stray away from potato salad. I just feel as if I’m doing myself a disservice when I ask for some on my plate — it’s like I don’t have my own individual thoughts. That I’m just lumping myself in with the rest of society. That I’m being lazy, allowing some condiment to become my major condiment just because society says it should be my major condiment.
I say down with potato salad!
Really, just like communism fell after the Cold War, so too should potato salad to far better alternatives like hummus and pita bread, calamata olives and mozzarella cheese and sushi. Just like the Berlin wall fell down as a result of communism biting the big one, so too should those huge plastic tubs of potato salad that you buy in your grocer’s fridge-a-lator.
Potato salad must be struck down and done away with, or freedom of other (more tasty and culturally significant) side dishes will die in its wake.
Oh. Yeah.
Yeesh! And I thought I was the only one in the fight against potato salad! I guess I will mail you my plastic “Fight Potato Salad” wrist band.
Comment by Katherine — May 31, 2005 @ 8:53 am
Oh, how I wish there were such a wrist band as that. I would wear it ALL DAY LONG.
Comment by Pauly D — May 31, 2005 @ 9:06 am
One important difference between Stalinism and potato salad. In Stalinism, there is only one party line at any one time. Granted, the party line will change from time to time (in 1939, Germany is wonderful! in 1941, they’re not).
Potato salad features an unStalin-like variety of alternatives. Ignoring the basic difference between “regular” potato salad and German potato salad, it seems that everyone makes their potato salad slightly differently. It’s gotten to the point where I avoid certain potato salads because I’m not sure what I’ll get.
And, for the record, I didn’t have potato salad at all. We were priming our house for house painting, and I just ate potato chips. (Ruffles.)
Comment by Ontario Emperor — May 31, 2005 @ 9:38 am
First off, I hate potato salad. Second, my family is just not a potato salad family. In fact, our sides consisted of: baked beans, corn on the cob, and grilled bell peppers.
Way better than potato salad.
Comment by Hilary — May 31, 2005 @ 10:03 am
First of all, where was my Memorial Day BBQ invite? Secondly, I wholeheartedly stand behind you on potato salad-gate. Perhaps with your new mayor, a petition to ban potato salad, at least on major BBQing holdiays, is in order.
Comment by casey — May 31, 2005 @ 10:09 am
I went to a BBQ this weekend…where there was no potato salad. BUT - I do like it a lot.
Comment by Kathleen — May 31, 2005 @ 10:44 am
Pauly,
While I have nothing but respect for the concept of what you are trying to do here, I really wish you had selected a different food to expunge from society. Potato salad is wonderful. Heavenly. Magnifique. One of my top five favorite foods of all time! So I disagree with your “down with potato salad” comment. The true problem is that most people can’t make GOOD potato salad. They put way too much mustard in and there’s nothing else to taste. Or they lather it in so much mayonnaise that the spuds are swimming. I have had plenty a nasty serving of potato salad, but when it is good, it is DAMN good. There was this restaurant in Boone, NC called The Mining Company. Their potato salad was so awesome it could convert even the most potato salad-protesting fiend into a lover of the stuff. It’s too bad the place shut down. Maybe not enough people caught word of the potato salad. OR maybe the rest of the food was not as memorable (no Memorial Day pun intended).
Anyway, I’ll stop rambling and urge you to go after the potato salad that is grotesque, sometimes unidentifiable, made by people who don’t know what they are doing. But please, oh please, don’t take away good potato salad. This is a necessity for some of us.
That said, I’d be thrilled if cole slaw were done away with entirely.
Comment by Nicole — May 31, 2005 @ 1:26 pm
So, Nicole, what you’re saying is… Cole Slaw is The New Lenin?
Comment by Pauly D — May 31, 2005 @ 2:09 pm
The weapon of mass destruction. To be forced to eat that stuff……..I can’t even look at it without chuckin, much less smell it.
Comment by Rich — August 28, 2006 @ 1:26 pm
I believe that Nicole’s message reinforces the point that Pauly was trying to make, when she points out that many times potato salad is nasty, but when made just right it can be heavenly. Communism itself, when defined and implemented correctly could be the best economic and political system. If a communist government truly assigned out work in a fair way, and if the people truly worked hard, knowing that in the end they would share equally and there would be no poor, that would be your Mining Company potato salad.
The problem is that people get lazy knowing their pay isn’t affected by the quality of their work and government officials get corrupt seeing all that money they have control over, and someone leaves the potato salad out of the fridge too long and it gets contaminated so we all get food poisoning at the party. It takes a rare group of leaders and followers to institute Communism correctly, just as it takes a rare person to make potato salad correctly. Too much mustard? lazy followers. Chopped up pickles? corrupt officials.
What percent of communist systems have been implemented correctly? What percent of potato salad has been put together correctly? I think you’d find the percentages pretty close.
(Of course, I believe you would find the percentages even lower on coleslaw. Coleslaw is probably the new Hitler…nothing good about it.)
Comment by Don — December 13, 2006 @ 8:16 am