I'd fess up and then make it with no pickle. When you serve it, each of you can add a pinch of your favorite pickle to your serving.

We do lots of individual zhushing of food at my house. After 35 years of cooking, I'm tired of preparing and eating food that I feel meh about just because my DH likes it. I'll do it occasionally but not day to day.

Does the dill relish work in tuna salad? I used to use sweet relish, in egg salad too, but discovered a kind-of-local tomatillo relish that is fantastic in tuna salad (less so in egg salad). But, he seems to have gone out of business and I don’t see tomatillo relish on any shelves around here. Maybe I will try dill relish. Small jar.

No advice, other than it seems a bit late to bring up that it was a different pickle, so maybe just let it slide.

I think it's kind of funny how people who do not prepare food for others very often, if at all, can often be the fussiest 😏

It's big of you to admit dill gives a great tang to potato salad--or that your family liked it! I could never like sweet potato salad but when you are making it you get to make what you like!! I think it makes perfect sense that the fussiest eaters cook mostly for themselves!! No one else would do it properly!!! hahahahah

Sherry I am with you 100% on the dill pickle dislike. I don’t love sweet pickle relish either so when I have a recipe that calls for it and actually needs it, I use finely diced bread and butter pickles. They are my favorite pickle and I often make them myself. They are sweet and not too sweet, iykwim. That said… tell, don’t tell… path of least resistance is my rec!

That's funny! I'd just make it the usual way next time and see if he says anything.

Well, I thought I didn’t like dill relish at all, but just now I made egg salad and guess what? The jar in the fridge is dill, not sweet. It was good.

(also, shout out for the egg discussion. I let the eggs sit in ice water for a full 20 minutes, did a good break/roll, and they peeled like a dream.)

Consider it a recipe/dish tweak. Do you go over all ingredients with DH? I'd just keep mum. If you make it again and he raves again, maybe say, guess what?

I can't abide sweet relish in anything.

I love dill relish or even some of the liquid from a jar of dill pickles in tuna, salads, deviled eggs, all kinds of dishes. There is never a jar of sweet relish in this house - I'm grateful DH doesn't like it any better than I do - He's a big fan of dill and I'll give a pinch to fish I'm grilling, all types of recipes.

I picked up a small jar of dried seasoning at Trader Joe's a few weeks ago simply labeled 'Pickle'. It's very dill, and very good! I put a bit on some tomato halves I was roasting and we like it, just be a bit careful if also using Parmesan or other salty cheese as the pickle seasoning leans to salty.

Bpath, Trader Joe's has a mild roasted tomatillo salsa that we like and often buy. Also good in egg dishes. I could see a bit of that in tuna salad but don't know if the flavor direction you'd wanted to take....

Thanks, morz, I will give it a try!

I like dill!

I make a dill potato salad.

Small red potatoes, boiled and drained. Cut up half or quarter.

Sprinkle vinegar on them while they are still hot.

Add finely minced fresh dill weed and flat leaf parsley. Toss to combine.

Add good EVOO, sea salt, freshly ground black pepper. Combine, careful not to over mix. It is really delicious.

PS now I am wondering if I left anything out? (Do I add onion ever?)

Somewhere in my files I have a recipe for a dill and cottage cheese bread.

”Phil Rutter’s Dill and Cottage Cheese Bread from Oberlin College.”

No knead.

I have not made in in quite some times. I began making it into a spiral loaf — spreading the dough out, putting down the dill mixture, then rolling it up before baking.

Maybe I can find that recipe. But I will need to move the Breville portable oven to the porch. It is 90°F and humid.

I put chopped cucumbers in potato & pasta salads, but never pickles.

I don't usually follow recipes exactly either. I often consult 2 or 3 for the same dish and take what I like from each one. Since I'm usually cooking for one, I often halve a recipe and when there's an odd number of something I use more or less. When I make a soufflé I don't measure and it always turns out.

I tend to follow recipes somewhat closely when it comes to baking, since chemistry is often involved, but a berry crisp is no-fail. Just make it up.

You are making me hungry. Now, I am hungry for a berry tart, or some pastry.

Petalique, come on over. I'll make you a berry tart. Or pie, or crisp, but deliciously berry.

Speaking of berries, this little book from Lori Longbotham is a good one.👍🏻

Sherry, it is always better to be Lucky than Good!

This reminds me of a Larry Niven story where aliens subtly identified humans who were lucky and steered them to meet and mate with each other, over generations quietly seeking to breed a lucky human. They succeed and are terrified at what they created.

Maybe you are the real life Teela Brown? Accidentally use the wrong relish - fantastic! Slip and add too much sesame oil - incredible! Overlook the oven timer - universal acclaim!

Anyway, now I want a big bowl of chilled potato salad. Specifically SWMBO’s potato salad, as she makes this dish in our house, following runes and incantations passed down by generations of Druids from the High Priestess who may or may not be named Betty Crocker.

I have no idea how to make potato salad. I would probably use any random greenish stuff as the relish, be it cornichons or green Jello. And I am not Lucky. So, I don’t make the dish. Which means I can’t have any, since SWMBO remains in California pending the return of the kitchen to, if not a functional state, at least not a haggard shattered state.

I guess I could go buy a tub of potato salad at the grocery store, but that stuff blows. Little cubes of mealy potato, bland filler white gloopy stuff, not a shallot or minced pickle or dill frond in sight. Potato salad should be proud, tangy, firm, colorful, kicky, definite, almost crisp - not nearly-baby-food.

Sigh. Off to eat some leftover Chinese takeout and defenestrate some cabinets.

SWMBO is "she who may be old"? LOL

Thanks, Bunny. Catching the next flight.

Whew, John! You had me worried. Out of desperation the DH picked up some grocery store potato salad, and it was precisely as you described. Insipid glop. Not a speck of anything flavorful. There was some whitish background goo, posing as mayonnaise or sunscreen. Totally ”white” and I was in awe at how some cook or machine could actually toss more than two ingredients together and manage to have no scent or odor. Not even the mealy (you nailed that) ersatz potatoes were recognizable, but identified only by the printed deli label. Prison escapees could slather themselves with the stuff so that the hounds would rush past.

My neighbor makes her ”French” styled potato salad with a dollop of Grey Poupon like mustard and added vinegar. (Hard boiled eggs, potatoe, onion, mayo, a bit of dijon mustard and a splash of cider vinegar. My mom and her sisters used to put some green bell pepper in theirs, but I have to go easy on green bell pepper. I read that the human nose can detect just one molecule of whatever green bell pepper is comprised of.

I love potato salad but there’s no pickle in mine either. I cook the potatoes in chicken broth and after draining leave them to dry in the cooking pot with a tea towel draped over it. I use mayo, white balsamic vinegar, minced sauteed garlic, celery seed, Diamond Kosher salt and cracked black pepper to dress it, and add diced vidalia onion, diced celery and hard boiled eggs to the potatoes. If the dressing needs to be thinned I use the chicken broth. It’s very flavorful and people seem to love it.

adding, and I only use those yellow Dutch baby potatoes (mini versions if Yukon Golds) with their skins on.

I am always kind of surprised that a lot of people think there is one best recipe or one particular way that _______ is prepared. When I was growing up we spend many Sunday afternoons throughout the spring and summer going to a camp, where people would eat and drink and play cards and do other stuff. Everyone brought food, and one was not really expected to make enough for all the people who were there. (And everybody brought their own hotdogs or hamburgers and someone would cook them).

So there were lots of duplicates. There were several people who made baked beans from scratch, there were several potato salads, both regular and German, there were several cole slaws, several scratch made cakes, several dips for potato chips. There were three sisters and sometimes all three of them would make baked beans from scratch or two of the three would make angel food cakes. And they were all different. The three sisters had grown up cooking in a hotel their family owned so I am not sure why their recipes were not more similar.

Anyway, I would frequently eat a little bit of all of the baked beans, or more than one kind of potato salad. I liked the variation. I don't always go to the same deli to get something because I don't want it to be the same way all the time. Apparently a lot of people require it to be identical every time or somehow it's not right. I guess I don't understand that.

One of the things that my family has also done is had entire dinners planned around all side dishes, all appetizers, all dips, all casseroles. We are planning one that is all potatoes.

There’s canned food and fast food outlets for those who want the same food experience week after week.

Having said that, there are some (many) unwriiten rules. Not too many people want their burger on canned brown bread or even Wonder Bread. Most people wouldn’t want a nice steak well done or smothered with tartar sauce. And some people are just lousy cooks.

There are chef/writers who seem to feel the need for novelty that can go too far. I would nor care to have a freshly cooked, shelled out Maine lobster mixed with cranberries and scallions. I can be a tad rigid about my classic lobster roll or lobster salad. No Miracle Whip! Salt the cooking water, not the lobster salad. Put a large amount of lobster salad into or onto the roll. Keep it simple. Never cook lobster with the rubber bands on the claws.

I have people in my family who love Kraft Miracle Whip and dislike mayonnaise. I loath MW.

“I am always kind of surprised that a lot of people think there is one best recipe or one particular way that _______ is prepared.”

I guess I don’t know many of those folks.

ARgirl, SWMBO is “She Who Must Be Obeyed”. It is a Rumpole of The Bailey thing. Sssh, she has no idea she’s called that. She would probably claim “O” stands for “Oppressed” or ”Obliviated”.

@petalique, please post that recipe if you find it… A dill & cottage cheese bread sounds great!

My husband wants the same EXACT food he ate when he was five. NO CHANGES! He is 73.

@party_music50 — I will have to look for my recipe (I have not made it in years). In the meanwhile, this looks like a good bet.

Link ➡️ https://www.cookiemadness.net/2016/06/25/cottage-cheese-dill-bread/

I used fresh dill in mine. This blogger says “The original Cottage Cheese Dill Bread recipe is from The Enchanted Broccoli Forest. ”

ETA I believe I put onion in the one I made. There are many recipes and variations online (nod to Pal).

Here is one that uses yeast and makes two loaves:

➡️ https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/31471/cottage-cheese-onion-dill-bread

Well there is a type of person. And sometimes they don't know what they like, or they think they know what they don't like. I know people who have eaten and enjoyed things they profess to not like because they don't realize they are eating it.

He grew out of it, but I had a nephew, and the dialogue went like this

Sister: So you make them sandwich for lunch. A slice of turkey, a slice of cheese, a piece of lettuce, mayonnaise. She's not picky you can make it any way and she will eat it. You have to make his a special way or he won't eat it.

It has to be cut on the diagonal because he says that makes it bigger.

The lettuce has to go in between the cheese and the meat, not next to the bread

Absolutely do not let him see the mayonnaise jar, he hates mayonnaise.

Me: You said mayonnaise.

Sister: Right. Turkey, cheese, lettuce, mayonnaise.

Me: But he hates mayonnaise.

Sister: Right. So if he sees it, tell him you are Only putting it on her sandwich, Not his.

Me: Okay, she gets turkey, cheese, lettuce, mayonnaise. He gets turkey, cheese, lettuce, No mayonnaise.

Sister: No, he gets mayonnaise.

Me: You said he hates mayonnaise. What is this some kind of power struggle? Just leave the mayonnaise off his.

Sister: You can't. Because then he won't eat it. He won't eat it without the mayonnaise. He say's it's not right.

Me. But he hates it.

Sister: He thinks hates it. He eats it all the time in things he doesn't know that it's in. He actually likes it. He just can't stand to see a white layer of something on his sandwich.

Me: So put mayonnaise on it but don't let him see it.

Sister: Yes. Put it on both slices of bread and rub it in really good and put the meat and cheese over it, and if he checks you tell him the bread just looks wet because of the cheese and the meat.

Me: So how about if you just make these before you leave.

That is approximately the maximal level of tolerance my family has had when we were little, our kids were little and now with their kids. There are no special meals, you have to try everything, you aren't going to win any tantrums about food. I have seen my nephew just put food into his offspring's mouth when they are screaming about not eating it because it's poison, if their mouth stays open long enough. There are certain things we did never get served, and still don't eat them at home, it's not like we ate everything. But wholesale refusal to eat any vegetables or refusing to eat anything but chicken fingers at the exclusion of anything else-- Things like that have not been tolerated in my extended family for any time that I can remember. Did it make the dinner table a war zone at times? Yes. Every kid goes through periods where they hate everything. One entire vacation at the shore was a screaming match at dinner time because the three year old hated everything and then other kids would misbehave. These things pass. The next family get together was fine. There's not a single person in my family who is weird about food as an adult.

Sometimes, a kid's refusal to eat something is because of allergies that aren't bad enough for the parents to see, but still uncomfortable for the kid, who often doesn't understand or have words to express it. Kids who won't eat anything are sometimes supertasters who think all kinds of things normal people enjoy taste like poison. I am close to a picky eater who also seems to have fossilized his range of foods as a five-year-old, but he has a great deal of discernment within those bounds, and I wouldn't be surprised if he were a maximal supertaster, since he mostly just wants plain.

Palimpsest, thank-you for the story. Really well told. Very funny. ;)

Pal, I loved reading your vignet. You should submit it for publication or an audio essay.

And it’s right on the money. My parent’s were good cooks and they didn’t jump through hoops to please their children’s palates. But one of my siblings would go out of her way to cater to the whims of a picky child who wouldn’t eat many day to day foods. He liked fast food offerings like chicken nuggets. Had to have them <rolling eyes>. Somehow, that now grown man seems to have adjusted and as far as I know partakes of normal fare and some ethnic dishes.

I’d like to know how your potato centered family event goes. Potatoes are so versatile. Ever have that small Colombian potato, ~ ”criolles”? It is geatured in the Colombian soup, ajiaco. The flavor is intense potato. For some reason, they are not grown in the US, although they can be purchased frozen. (I don’t think potatoes freeze well.)

When he was twenty, he was very flexible. Ate anything and everything. The older he gets the less he likes. It is kinda like a turtle pulling back into it's shell.

He will still eat shrimp, except I messed up and devined them, so now I must devine everything.

Teach him how to devein them!

How can deveining shrimp be considered messing up? I adore shrimp, but always buy it already deveined. I don't want to eat the vein either.

From babyhood my daughter was a good eater. She has always loved fish and vegetables of any variety. She used to want food I didn't approve of, e.g., Velveeta. I flat refused, but I'm sure she had it at someone else's house, like watching the slasher movies we refused to rent. haha.

Today she is an adventurous eater, but two things she loathes, get this, bacon and watermelon.

My darling niece would only eat bananas and hot dogs, had a meltdown at the mere suggestion she try anything else. The rest of the family tut-tutted. She grew up to be a lovely, healthy woman, who has expanded her diet somewhat.

Sorry, I grew up on the coast. No one devined shrimp. EVER! After all, you do not devine oysters,lol. There would be nothing left!

Olychick, no!

I grew up eating anything in the American, Chinese, and French cuisine repertoire. Chicken necks, snails, White Castle burgers, bring it on.

There was a period when I was supposed to bring my serious others home to my grandparents' home for a big family dinner, during which they'd watch to see what the girl would eat. Sea cucumber, shrimp heads, fish faces, it was kind of funny but seldom to her. SWMBO failed this test but they liked her anyway.

DD spent her first year traveling and thus eating everything there was to eat from Taiwan to Australia to Europe. Here, toddler daughter, have some haggis. She grew up as an adventurous eater and cook. DS had a more conventional childhood, one of those kids who thought chickens were boneless and macaroni was made of cheese. He has become a better eater.

They still won't eat everything, which is disappointing. When they were little I decided to demonstrate the fiscal virtues of being omnivorous and announced that we'd spend a week eating only meats/fishes you could but for under $1/lb, then a week at $1 to $2/lb, and so on, working our way up the price ladder. At the time there was a little Chinese market that had the weirdest meat/fish counter. I think they got the offcuts and jetsam from other markets. So you could get all these weird and wonderful things - tendons, tails, faces, organs, lungs, intestines, salmon heads and tails and spines, etc. So the first week we had meals of pork spleen (made into pate), chicken hearts (deep fried), pig heart (stuffed and roasted), and other delicacies that were then selling for under $1/lb.

I thought it was going great. The kids didn't. SWMBO also didn't. My lesson plan was terminated. I keep threatening to resume it, but inflation has made life difficult, for dollar stores and dollar cooks alike. And the little market closed, so I don't know where to get fish heads etc.

House rules when I was young were that mum was only making one dinner, you had to try everything, and you must eat x amount of certain items (i.e. you must have at least 7 broccoli pieces, you must eat a piece of the meat, etc. - vegetable rule was for me; meat rule was for my sister.) Mum only making one dinner remained a rule throughout, though the must eat everything morphed as time went on (if I tried the chili and hated it a couple weeks earlier, it wasn't expected that I would suddenly like it this time, but a second dinner would not be made; I ate the rice.) I was generally the picky one ... my mum determined that I was actually picky enough and stubborn enough to starve myself. The concept of 'just offer the same dish until the kid eats it' was not going to work with me.

I had mixed reasons for rejecting things ... some textural (like broccoli florets - my mum would toss cut up stems into the steamer for me), some flavor based (like chili and garlic), some smell based (like fennel and garlic). I've figured out some of my aversions, but others still remain (still can't stand broccoli florets.) A bunch were either quality based or accompanying ingredients, like I thought I hated tomatoes ... turns out, I hate hot house tomatoes, overly acidic tomatoes, and cheap tomato sauce (which is often full of garlic and over spiced for my taste). I hated pizza (yup, I was the kid that didn't like the pizza) because I was being offered cheap pizza, which was greasy and had bad tomato sauce on it (I would literally peel it apart to remove the sauce and grease.)

Fun to hear these stories. I was a bit picky and would not drink after myself — I wanted a new, clean glass.

My daughter was a very fussy eater as a kid. Would not try new foods. She liked what she liked and didn't want to try new things. Now as an adult, she will eat just about anything and loves to try new foods.

My son was not a picky eater as a kid. He'd eat whatever we were having. He would try anything. If he didn't like it, he knew he would not be forced to eat it. Now as an adult, he is much pickier than my daughter.

So their eating habits as a child do not always correlate to how they will be as adults.

I can remember as a small child refusing to eat yellow crook-neck squash. Now, I will eat my weight in it!! I don’t remember a lot of angst about food. Mother put it on the table and we ate it or didn’t. There was no alternative.

A few days ago I put together an impromptu potato salad from a large left over potato that had been cooked the day before and put in what I thought was the a normal bit of sweet relish for the amount and I dont know why, but it was just too sweet and did not please me.

I, too, think that I prefer a chopped up bread and butter pickle as it is often not as sweet. Next time I am not going to use sweet relish. Have always used a bit of relish, but this was too sweet and pronounced and not sure just why. I had bought a jar of sweet relish from the co op and was looking for one that was less sweet than the ususal suspects . Guess this is not it.

Due to the disliked mayo that is used by most for potato salad, I dont make it very often anyway.

I really have a low tolerance for mayo and will only use it at home and very sparingly. That smallest jar will last the two of us for the most part of a year as hubs will make himself a tuna salad or some such once in a while.

Wondering about the not deveining shrimp thing - that intestinal tract usually is full of black and gritty sand and that's one sensation on my teeth I cannot abide. I know you can purge clams by putting in a container with fresh seawater daily and adding cornmeal to flush out the sand - I've done it plenty of times. Can shrimp also purged, I wonder?

I doubt it ... clams are alive when cooked; shrimp are dead when purchased ... you'll need to empty the shrimp's gut yourself by deveining.

No sweet pickles or bread and butter pickles in my kitchen, but we do keep dill pickles on hand, and that is what I sometimes use in deviled eggs (deviled ham, etc) or potato salad, but sometimes I use pimento stuffed olives instead. When I make Crab Louis, I use kalamata olives, but when I made this last week, it took me an hour and a half to pick all of the meat from the snow crab legs. Next time I will wait for King Crab legs.

I love dill and use it when I cook fish (I hate tarragon) and also in Ranch Salad Dressing, which also has parsley and garlic in it.

I meant while they're still alive, of course.

Top hit on Google (emphjsis theirs): " One of the prevailing methods believed by producers to extend the shelf life and improve quality and texture is purging. During purging, shrimp are held overnight without feed in clean recirculating water. This permits the animals to “purge” or empty the gut of food, thus improving the general eating quality " -- Global Seafood Alliance.

I’m late to this discussion. I would make your next potato salad the same way with the dill pickles and see if DH notices the 2nd time… then I would come clean.

I take note of all these delicious ingredients added to potato salad. I make a very basic one. I sprinkle chopped onions ( whichever I happen to have ) over the boiled potatoes and then pour over some good vinegrette while still warm. Let it get cold and the add a good amount of Hellmans mayo and pepper and salt. Very basic but we like it. However, I am wanting to try a whole grain mustard dressing as suggested by one of our posters in the WFD thread.

I alternate between buying good Polish dill pickles and then next time I might buy a jar of bread and butter pickles, or sweet gherkins. We like the variety.

I agree with Pal. My first reaction would be to just say I had used dill relish.