I'm currently catching up on paperwork and - lo and behold! - doing some research reading as well. That feels good, both of it! I often feel like I'm not getting enough research time in, but there's always so much mundane stuff to do... like filing taxes (which is a large part of the current paperwork stuff). Or getting the car fixed up so it can pass its prescribed biannual check... sigh.

On the sort-of-plus side, at least the weather is properly wintery, with snow falling and snow lying on the ground outside. And because that makes everything outside white, which is nice, but not very colourful, which would be a good thing in this rather grey and cold time of the year... we had blue potato salad today.

That's the Bavarian/Franconian version of potato salad, seasoned with oil and vinegar, no mayonnaise added. Germany actually has a cultural divide between the mayonnaise potato salad areas and the oil-and-vinegar potato salad areas, and a lot of people have a very firm opinion about which kind (their kind, obviously!) is the One and Only kind, and the other just weird or even awful.

Now... I grew up in Franconia, but my gran comes from mayonnaise country, so the potato salad of my childhood was not the typical local one. Consequently, I like them both, with a pronounced preference for the kind that my gran makes, because, duh. That said, I have had wonderful potato salad specimens of both kinds, and have tasted examples of both kinds gone wrong (as in edible, but definitely not tasty).

The blue one in the picture is not my gran's version, because that involves making mayonnaise (or buying it, but it needs so little that I prefer making just a small amount), boiling eggs, and having both the eggs and all the potatoes cool down completely before final assembly. For weekday lunches, this takes too much time (and/or too much planning ahead). This oil-and-vinegar version can be prepared hot and served warm to lukewarm, and thus is easier to fit within my usual one-hour-for-cooking time-slot.

It consists of diced onion, on which you pour a bit of hot broth (or hot water and then add some broth powder) so they mellow out a little; a bit of smoked bacon (the German kind can be eaten uncooked; if you can't get that, you can always fry your bacon cubes and add them afterwards); a dash of the liquid that your pickled cucumbers swim in; some of said pickled cucumbers. Add the hot boiled, peeled, sliced potatoes, which will soak up the liquids; then add salt, pepper, fresh parsley (if you have), more vinegar or pickle liquid, and oil to taste.

Proportions are entirely up to you - I like quite a bit of onion and cucumber in the salad, so I will use about a medium-sized onion and at least two large pickled cucumbers for the two-person salad (which is about 500 g of potatoes, and usually is not consumed completely in one go).