Potato Salad With Olives and Roasted Peppers

With late spring here, and summer not far off, there's nothing better than a good potato salad, although it's actually good all year long

Ingredients:

1 pound small red potatoes (available in microwaveable packages)
1 pound small Yukon Gold potatoes (available in microwaveable packages)
1/2 cup mayonnaise (reduced fat type is fine)
2 tablespoons seasoned salt (whatever brand you use)
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves of garlic, minced
12 green olives, halved
12 black olives, halved (I often use Kalamata olives)
1 stalk celery, chopped
1/2 cup roasted peppers, chopped  (store bought is fine, I used a mixture of red and yellow peppers)
2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
4 sweet gherkins, chopped
1 tablespoon black pepper
paprika for dusting

Cook the potatoes by whatever method you prefer. The microwaveable packages are great. Let the potatoes cool a bit,* then cut them into pieces, adding the potato pieces to a large dish. Since the potatoes differ in size, I generally quarter the smallest ones, and then try to cut the larger ones into similar size pieces. Add the onion, garlic, olives, celery, gherkins, and roasted peppers, plus the seasoned salt and black pepper, then add the extra virgin olive oil and mayonnaise, and thoroughly mix for a couple of minutes or more to get all the potato pieces coated. Dust the potato salad with sweet paprika, cover with plastic wrap or a lid and chill.

* When the potatoes are a little warm, they will absorb the flavors of the other ingredients much better, than if cold.

WORD HISTORY:                                                                                                                                 

Celery-The ultimate origin of this word is unknown, but it goes back to Greek "sélinon," which meant "parsley." This was borrowed by Latin as "selinon," meaning "parsley," but "seemingly" also, "celery" (celery and parsley are closely related). This gave the northern Italian dialect of the Lombardy region, "seleri," ^ which was borrowed into French as "céleri," and this was borrowed into English as "celery" in the mid 1600s. Close English relative, German, also borrowed the word in the 1600s as "Sellerie;" however, there "may" have been influence directly from the northern Italian dialect, which borders on the German speaking region of central Europe. Likely though, French was the "main" contributor to the German borrowing, with one reason being that French was quite popular in those times, especially among the nobility and well educated of Europe.

^ The Italian dialect "Lombard" is not the same as "Lombardic," a Germanic dialect of old, spoken by the Germanic tribe the "Lombards," after whom the Italian region was named. Lombardic died out centuries ago, as these Germanic settlers of northern Italy gradually became Italian speaking.