CYGNET — Linda Mathias has spent years perfecting her potato salad.
Whether it’s a batch of five-pound potatoes or 60 pounds — which she admits she doesn’t make any more —
her potato salad is a hit at church functions and family gatherings.
First off, she boils the potatoes and lets them sit in the fridge overnight, which makes them easier to
peel. Although her father always said the skins are the best part, she doesn’t leave them on.
Then she sits in the living room watching “Gunsmoke” while she finely dices the potatoes, celery and
onion. She doesn’t trust anyone else to do it right.
And she uses a cheese grater for the hard-boiled eggs.
The results? A creamy salad with just the right crunch of celery and a hint of mustard.
“I can’t do that anymore,” the 76-year-old said about extra-large batches of the salad. After making 60
pounds for three different weddings, she was done.
“I practiced for years,” Mathias said. She has never written down the recipe before sharing it for
today’s Cook’s Corner. “I don’t have one. I just do it.”
She has all the vegetables mixed the day ahead and adds the Miracle Whip (Hellmann’s just doesn’t taste
the same), mustard and seasoning the day of.
Her husband, Richard, “is spoiled,” she laughed. “He absolutely will not touch anyone else’s potato
salad.”
Mathias is a self-taught cook, learning how after her mother died when she was 10 years old.
Born in North Baltimore, “I just picked up what I could pick up and learned on my own.”
She seldom picks up a cookbook, and was flabbergasted when she was asked recently for her recipe for
vegetable soup.
“Who has a recipe for vegetable soup?”
Her grandchildren prefer her beef and noodles and her great-grandson will only eat her chocolate chip
pancakes.
She prefers her ham and bean soup, and also has revised her stuffed peppers recipe to leave out the rice.
Her daughters “all are good cooks,” she praised, and her grandsons have embraced smoking meat.
She and her husband has traveled to 49 states, and plan to hit the last — North Dakota — this summer.
Alaska is her favorite.
At her age, “you can’t do what you used to do and you can’t do what you want to do.”
