glutenfreedirtcheap

It’s potato salad. You were expecting design miracles?

One of the keys to making food really cheap is to mix expensive and inexpensive ingredients.

Also, if you’re cheap and gluten free, I have one word for you:  potatoes.  I’ll even put on my kerchief so I look like the Irish potato farmers I’m probably descended from.  (Not a good look.)

I put this recipe together after I’d been in court all morning–Wayne’s DWI is going to trial soon–so the potatoes were ready by midnight.

Ingredients:

20 small yellow potatoes

2 lemons

20 green olives

5 pieces of cooked bacon  (If you don’t have that, cook some in the microwave according to the package directions–Hormel is gluten free;  probably an employee’s ginger kid has celiac.)

8 tablespoons mayonnaise  (Hellman’s is gluten free.)

Kitchen apparati:

1 1/2 -2 quart crock pot

fork

mixing bowl

Put the potatoes into the crock pot eight to ten hours before you plan on making the salad.  Rinse the potatoes well, and cover them with water in the crock pot.  Turn the crock to low.  When you get home from whatever you’re doing, in this case, dancing on the roof during the Perseids shower, turn the heat off and run cold water over the potatoes.

Go do something else for twenty minutes, like unload the dishwasher, or take a nap with your boots on.

Cut the green olives into thirds.  Rip the bacon into small shreds.  The potatoes will be just barely cool enough to handle.  Cut them into slices, and then into chunks.  (I always set a kitchen timer for tasks like this;  that way I know I only have to chop things for five more minutes, or ten, as the case may be.)  Squeeze the lemons into a cup and pick out the seeds.  Pour the lemon juice over the bacon, green olives and potatoes.  Spoon out eight tablespoons of mayonnaise onto the potatoes and mix well.  Eat or refrigerate immediately.

Cost:  About $5.00 for seven or eight servings.