Potatoes: What are they good for?

Of course they're great for a lot of things, like providing the prime example of a Giffen good in Hal Varian's microeconomics text.  But this being the Hop and Hearth, after all, I'm going to talk about eating them.  The reason that I even ask the question is that Nina and I don't eat very many potatoes.  We tend to favor quinoa, or rice, or quinoa pasta for our dinner carbs.  Anyway, I bought a bag of mixed potatoes yesterday because Nina recently got into breakfast (I'm talking full-on American breakfast).  Yesterday I shredded a handful of potatoes and blanched them.  Then this morning I sauteed some onions in oil and added the shredded blanched potatoes (and a decent amount of salt).  I cooked them on pretty low heat in the pan--mixing them up occasionally--until they were pretty well browned all over.  Not too bad.

Come dinner time I still had a bunch of 'taters.  I decided to make an American potato salad (as opposed to German or Serbian potato salad).  I boiled the potatoes in salty water until they were just soft enough to get a fork into.  (I have learned that the #1 potato salad FAIL is to overcook the potatoes.)  I immediately removed them from the heat, drained them, ran cold water over them, and refrigerated them.  In the meantime I chopped some onions and celery and sauteed them in oil, salting them once they just started to get translucent.  I was careful not to over-do it, and soon removed them from the heat and refrigerated them as well.  I also hard-boiled two eggs and refrigerated them when they were done.  Shortly before serving time I took all out and mixed in a bowl with a healthy dollop of mayonnaise along with salt and pepper to taste.

It was one of the best potato salads I've made, and I think the reasons were:

• Plenty of salt in the water when I boiled the potatoes
• Didn't overcook the potatoes (as I said, this is critical)
• Use a lot of celery and onions: by volume there was almost as much of them as potatoes

Overall I was very pleased with the results, and definitely would make this again.