UnSouthern Potato Salad

One of the folks here at Drikung Meditation Center Boston boiled a few potatoes and even cut them up, but left them with a note for someone to make potato salad with them. Not being anywhere near a gourmet cook, I left them alone, thinking someone else would do it. However, when it got around to late Sunday afternoon, it was clear that no one had that intention yet. Therefore, being a Southern boy, I do know a little about potato salad. Thus I set out to make a batch of potato salad.

In my mind I have the list of ingredients that I am accustomed to using in a Southern potato salad. I started looking for them and soon realized that I would have to do a little substituting. I couldn't find sweet pickle relish but found other pickles and chopped up a few. I couldn't find any celery, but found half of a large bell pepper and chopped it up. The only form of garlic was whole cloves, one of which I chopped as finely as I could. There was mayonnaise but there was only spicy brown mustard. However, the French's spicy brown was close enough to yellow that I used it. When I was looking for ingredients, I had seen fresh basil and fresh tarragon and couldn't resist chopping up a little of both to go in my potato salad. Finally, I had boiled two eggs which I now chopped up and threw in.

Putting it all in a large enough mixing bowl to give me room to thoroughly mix it, I stirred it all together. I was careful that I did not tear up the egg whites to keep them visible in the finished salad. At this point I added the mustard to be able to judge how much to add by the color it imparted.

After I put it in a container to put into the refrigerator, I sat down to write this blog. Only then did I realize that I had left out the one ingredient specifically bought for the potato salad, onion. I went back into the kitchen, chopped up half an onion and added it. Now my potato salad was finished.

Almost nothing about the potato salad was according to plan. Nevertheless, based on my own taste test, it came out fine. At least it suits my tastes, although I may be the only one who likes it.

In the bigger picture of things, from the time that I took refuge as a Tibetan Buddhist, nothing has gone according to plan. Nevertheless, I wound up with enough Dharma active in my life to see me through the diagnosis of cancer, its treatment, and the recovery from that treatment. Not only that, I was able to turn the burning up of all the negative Karma that the disease process represented into something positive for my own benefit as well as that of other sentient beings. Now I sit here a Tibetan Buddhist monk, albeit a “baby monk.”