Slow-Cooker German Potato Salad -- The Recipes We Carry Forward

Memorial Day. A year ago, we were grilling burgers at the apartment complex with Terrence and Mama and Oliver and the whole crew. A year ago the grill was uneven and Jayden ran in circles and Mama brought the potato salad. A year ago was a different planet. This Memorial Day: me and the kids, in the apartment, with burgers I grilled on the George Foreman because the outdoor grill feels wrong without a crowd. A George Foreman Memorial Day. The downgrade of the century.

Thirty-eight weeks. The baby is low and heavy and my back hurts in a way that suggests the baby is using my spine as a pillow. I waddle. I don't walk — I WADDLE. Chloe says I walk like a penguin. Jayden says I walk like a fire truck (everything is compared to a fire truck). I say I walk like a woman who is carrying an eight-pound human in her abdomen and would like to sit down, please, forever, until June.

George Floyd was killed today. May 25th. Minneapolis. I saw it on the news — on my phone, on my couch, in my apartment, thirty-eight weeks pregnant with a Black man's child (yes, Terrence is Black — I haven't said this explicitly because it didn't matter and still doesn't except that today it matters in a way that makes my chest tight and my hands shake). My baby — Sarah Mitchell's baby, white mother, Black father — is going to be born into THIS. Into a world where a man can be killed on camera for being Black and alive at the same time. Into a world where the breath is taken and the world watches and nothing changes or everything changes, depending on whether you're the one who can't breathe.

I called Terrence. He was watching. He'd been watching for hours. His voice was flat — the flat of a man who is processing something that isn't new but is newly unbearable. He said: "Our baby. Our baby is going to live in this." I said: "Our baby is going to live in this and we're going to teach them that their lives matter. Every day. We're going to teach them." He said: "My mama is crying." Gloria is crying. In Decatur. For a man in Minneapolis. Because the distance doesn't matter. Because the breath matters. Because every Black mother in America looked at that video and saw her son.

I didn't cook tonight. I sat on the couch with my kids — my white daughter, my white son, my biracial baby in my belly — and I thought about what I'm going to teach them. What I'm going to feed them besides food. What recipes exist for raising children who know that breath is a right and not a privilege. I don't have those recipes in Earline's box. I'll have to write them myself. New cards. New handwriting. Same box. The box expands. It always has.

I didn’t cook that night — I sat. But in the days that followed, with the baby pressing low and the world pressing heavy, I kept thinking about Mama’s potato salad at last year’s Memorial Day cookout: the way she set it on the table like it was a given, like it was part of the holiday’s grammar. I can’t replicate that day, and I’m not trying to. But I can make a potato salad of my own — a slow-cooker version, because right now slow and steady is the only pace I have — and I can put it on the table and let my kids eat it and begin, one small thing at a time, to write new cards for the box.

Slow-Cooker German Potato Salad

Prep Time: 20 min | Cook Time: 4 hrs | Total Time: 4 hrs 20 min | Servings: 8

Ingredients

• 2 1/2 lbs red potatoes, unpeeled, sliced 1/4-inch thick
• 6 strips thick-cut bacon, chopped
• 1 medium yellow onion, finely diced
• 2 stalks celery, thinly sliced
• 1/3 cup apple cider vinegar
• 2 tablespoons granulated sugar
• 1 tablespoon whole-grain mustard
• 1/2 teaspoon celery seed
• 3/4 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
• 1/2 teaspoon black pepper
• 2 tablespoons fresh flat-leaf parsley, chopped
• 2 tablespoons reserved bacon drippings

Instructions

1. Cook the bacon. In a skillet over medium heat, cook the chopped bacon until crisp, 6–8 minutes. Transfer bacon to a paper-towel-lined plate and reserve 2 tablespoons of the drippings. Set aside.
2. Sauté the aromatics. In the same skillet with the reserved drippings, cook the diced onion and celery over medium heat until softened, about 4 minutes. Add the apple cider vinegar, sugar, mustard, celery seed, salt, and pepper, stirring to combine. Remove from heat.
3. Layer the slow cooker. Place the sliced potatoes in the slow cooker. Pour the warm vinegar-onion mixture over the top and stir gently to coat all the potato slices evenly.
4. Cook low and slow. Cover and cook on LOW for 3 1/2 to 4 hours, until the potatoes are tender when pierced with a fork but still hold their shape. Do not cook on HIGH — the potatoes will become mushy.
5. Finish and serve. Gently fold in the crispy bacon and chopped parsley. Taste and adjust seasoning. Serve warm directly from the slow cooker, or transfer to a serving bowl.

Nutrition (per serving)

Calories: 218 | Protein: 6g | Fat: 9g | Carbs: 28g | Fiber: 2g | Sodium: 374mg