I love the summertime for all the fresh produce readily accessible. Fairfield county has numerous farmers markets and many of my family members have their own gardens.

This weekend we went to Kyle’s parents house and his mom sent me home with a large shopping bag full of red potatoes, onions, cucumbers, kale and string beans from their garden. My mom also just brought me a large bag of hot peppers from her garden. After seeing all the ingredients at my disposal I decided to make potato salad two ways. The first was a warm Italian style potato salad with roasted hot peppers, string beans and oil and vinegar.  Because Kyle doesn’t like as much heat as I do, I made him the old-fashioned style recipe. The first is warm in temperature and hot in flavor, the other is cold, creamy and crunchy.

Ingredients

Warm Italian Potato Salad:

• Red Potatoes, boiled until fork tender and cut in large pieces
• 1/4 Red Onion, sliced thin
• Hot Peppers
• Balsamic Vinegar
• Olive Oil
• Dried Oregano
• Salt, Pepper, Garlic Powder
• String Beans
• Italian parsley, finely chopped
• Celery salt

Instructions

Preheat your oven to 300 degrees. Place your hot peppers in a baking dish.  Add a few tablespoons of balsamic vinegar and olive oil. Sprinkle with a fair amount of salt, pepper, garlic powder and oregano.  Mix well, cover with tinfoil and let roast for at least an hour.  You really can’t over cook them.

Set the hot peppers aside. Cut up 3 peppers and add to a large mixing bowl. (Save the extra peppers in your fridge for later use on sandwiches, with eggs, over a nice pork chop, etc.)

Place string beans in the same pan the peppers were in. Mix the string beans in the sauce and add a drop of water. Place in the microwave for 1-2 minutes or you can add them to a saute pan and cook that way.  I like the string beans to be the crunch in the salad so I don’t cook them any further than that.  Pour the entire dish with sauce into the mixing bowl.

Add the potatoes. Then sprinkle with salt, pepper, garlic powder and celery salt.

American Potato Salad:

• Red Potatoes, boiled until fork tender and cut in large pieces
• White onion, diced thin (normally I use red onion but I couldn’t turn down these fresh onions!)
• Salt & Fresh Cracked Pepper
• 3-4 Celery Stalks
• Celery Salt
• 1 1/2 tbsp Light Mayo
• 1 tbsp Reduced Fat Sour Cream

Instructions