Celery-Potato Salad

Wow. It's been a rough month. An awful illness knocked out our household for a few weeks, then BAM! We were shocked out of the cold drizzle by this crazy-intense heat wave that rocked the west coast. Saturday was way too hot for Seattle in May. But no matter, I was more than happy to be at the market, outside, soaking it all up. My heat therapy, I call it. The summer weather also got me in the mood for gardening, so while at the market I bought four different varieties of tomato starts for the garden, plus two kinds of basil and a purple-leafed plant called chiso (apparently with an allspice/clove flavor that goes well in salads--who knew?).

As far as local produce goes, it's kind of a weird time right now in the Pacific Northwest. The summer plants are still too young to be producing, and we're all sick of the winter staples. The only thing that really called out to me was the beautiful young stalks of celery. They called them "celeriac", but that was most certainly a misnomer. Celeriac is the root of the celery plant, and these were quite obviously the tops of the young celery plant. In fact, they were mostly leaves with a few young, tender stems tying them all together. So don't ask why, but after my celery purchase I somehow jumped to potato salad! Yes, to go with the grilled ribs and mint juleps! What better way to eat our way through a 90 degree day? So I found some beautiful red potatoes (which also had a purplish-hued flesh) and turned everything into a potato salad. I even made my own mayonnaise from scratch for the very first time. I've always been afraid of it (is there really that much oil in it?), but Julia coached me through. It was extremely easy, with the aid of my Cuisinart, and oh so worth it. The olive oil that I used was the star, and it complimented the subtle potatoes and crunchy celery perfectly. A satisfying end to a beautiful day.