Featuring: potato salad!

I made potato salad again.

Sorry.

But when you live alone and you are trying to actually use up the ingredients you have, instead of buying all sorts of fancy new ones, you have to make potato salad a couple times in order to use up the potatoes you bought at the market last week. There are of course a million other things you could choose to make with potatoes, Vichyssoise for one (chilled potato and leek soup), but that'll be next weekend perhaps.

And when it's a rainy Montreal day, which means it's warm and windy, and pouring, there's nothing better than potato salad for one. Or is there?

Smoked paprika potato salad with bacon, shallots, mustard seed and hard boiled eggs

for two eaters (I know I said for one, but you'll need leftovers)

3 Yukon gold-like potatoes (medium size)

6 Strips of bacon
2 Shallots

2 Eggs (or more for extras)

2 TBS Crème fraîche (I know, not something we all have lying around, I did and still do, so do your best and use mayonnaise? That would be quite fine, or yogurt was, I believe, the last suggestion)
1 TBS Dijon mustard
1 1/2 tsp Smoked sweet paprika (if you do anything, spend the extra bucks here)
1 TBS Mustard seed
Salt and pepper

Handful of cilantro leaves
Handful of chopped chives

1 - Cut up your potatoes into cubes (you pick the size - smallish though)
2 - Steam them until soft
3 - While you do this, chop up the bacon and shallots (I left the shallot morsels on the larger side). Then fry together on medium heat
4 - Put eggs onto boil. There are many ways to do this, but I put them in water, let it reach a roiling boil, then I turn the pot off and let them sit there for approx. 10 minutes. Then I transfer them into a pot of cold water and let them cool
5 - While all that cooks, steams, roils and boils, chop up the chives and wash the cilantro, picking off leaves (set them aside)
6 - Mix up the dressing (creme fraiche, paprika etc,.) (you might have to make adjustments after you put the dressing on the potatoes)
7 - When potatoes are done, you can rinse them off with cold water to cool them down a bit, or let them sit for a while, or just toss them in right away. Add them to a bowl with the bacon and the chives and cilantro. Then pour the dressing over top and stir around. Taste. Adjust seasoning.
8 - Peel your eggs, cut into quarters, or chop them up, whatever you prefer, and toss them on top of your delicious little salad.

EAT

Then, because eating only potato salad for dinner (unless you consume a very large quantity) can leave you wanting a little more, I recommend you put on Paul McCartney's album Ram, grab a banana, scoop a spoon into some peanut butter and dance around the kitchen alternating bites between the two, giggling and guffawing about living the high life and another opportunity to eat, well. (Yes this is possible alone.)

I have to say that I was starving when I got home from my translation class around 9 pm, so I had more salad and then made these cookies and ate quite a bit of the dough, plus three when they were done. As you will see however, when you read the recipe, they're extremely healthy, and very small. And I'm quite pleased that I finally made them; I think I've been wanting to do so for about a month, thinking about them constantly, imagining them, grinning about them, slowly procuring the ingredients one grocery store outing at a time....it was high, high time.

Overall, things are fine, and my hair is getting longer, as you can see, which is always quite a thrill, unless of course you don't want to go through that awkward phase, but I don't mind it at the moment.