Daring to do it: Potato Salad

uI promise, there are lots of things going on here other than Daring Kitchen challenges... But time has been kind of hard to capture, and keeping up with posting has been less than easy... I hope to get back into the swing soon, but you never know... Especially because there are now two little ones in the house to play with!

This month's Daring Cook's Challenge was a little different than usual. It was, like the edible containers challenge, a contest, which is fine, I guess... I never cook or bake to win prizes, though, so I sort of ignored that aspect.

Jami Sorrento was our June Daring Cooks hostess and she chose to challenge us to celebrate the humble spud by making a delicious and healthy potato salad. The Daring Cooks Potato Salad Challenge was sponsored by the nice people at the United States Potato Board, who awarded prizes to the top 3 most creative and healthy potato salads. A medium-size (5.3 ounce) potato has 110 calories, no fat, no cholesterol, no sodium and includes nearly half your daily value of vitamin C and has more potassium than a banana!

I love potatoes. A lot. So this was a challenge that I thought would offer endless possibilities to me. And, in some ways it did. But, as I mentioned above, things have gotten a little hectic around here, and the birth of our new Little Girl (there will be an update one of these days!) took precedence over even my favorite food, the potato.
I made two different potato salads this month. I will give brief descriptions of each and show you the pictures, but this post will be a bit briefer, as you never know when a newborn is going to need you!

Potato Salad #1: Empty the Fridge!
This was a very basic salad - boiled russet potatoes and pretty much any vegetable I could find. Only the potatoes were cooked, everything else was raw to maintain color, freshness and texture. I used: broccoli, carrots, snow peas, sugar snap peas, sweet onion and zucchini. To dress the salad I simply used balsamic vinegar, tossed in while the potatoes were still warm. As I said - pretty basic. Yummy, though. Sometimes things are best kept simple, don't you think?


Potato Salad #2: Roasted Potato Salad with Sun Dried Tomatoes

Having made a raw salad, I wanted to also make a warm, cooked one. I love roasted potatoes anyway, so this was pretty much a natural for me.
I started by roasting my potatoes with onions and garlic. To that I added any other vegetable I could think of: red pepper, green pepper, yellow squash, celery... I think that was it! I also added some cooked white beans, for flavor, texture and protein. To all of that I then added some Italian herbed sun dried tomatoes. Everything went (back) into the oven to heat through, then the whole thing was dressed with white wine vinegar and some additional Italian seasonings.

Thank you, Jami, for giving me an extra opportunity to play with one of my favorite foods! It certainly was fun to see the amazing variations which our Daring Cooks around the world came up with. I am definitely going to have to try some of those!

If you like potatoes half as much as I do, do yourself a favor and look here to see what my fellow Cooks made!