Kohlrabi-Potato Trance Salad

I have vague memories of opening my eyes and seeing the smeared blue and white open sky, glowing with red, then pink, then yellow. Each time I blinked I exited a dream and entered a slightly different sky. My eyes were too heavy to stay in the expansive day clouds for long, and before I knew it my alarm was screaming angrily for the fourth time. I shut it off and lay still, staring up at the ceiling, which tipped from side to side as though I were recovering from twirling in circles. It felt good to be exhausted, and I gave myself ten minutes to revel in it.

I was still in a dream like trance when I left the house, which might be why it wasn't until after I hit the Caribou that I realized that I was still wearing my house slippers. No one said anything to me as I ponied up to the register wearing black pinstriped work pants, a pink polo, and brown slippers, or if they did snicker at me, I was too preoccupied to notice. My mind was completely wrapped in figuring out when I was going to fit in a car appointment. When I got back to my car I began thinking about where I was going to park and how long it was going to take me to get from the back of the lot to my office. That's when I noticed that my toes were bare, and I exited the highway to turn back home to switch shoes.

I remembered how my Hungarian professor showed me her slippers behind the door of her office. She confessed that she had been so preoccupied with a class she was teaching that she had forgotten her shoes that morning. I looked at her and thought, 'wow, that is crazy. That would never happen to me.'

Now here I was. A shoe neglect-or. A preoccupied woman, who's mind is never really here nor there, but somewhere in the clouds. It's not one thing that I am fixated on. It's everything. It's running, and writing, and salad. It's BDNF, energy metabolism, and farmers marketing. It's radio, autism, and kettle bells. It's family, errands, and finances. It's life, and it feels good to be totally consumed by it, to be digested and absorbed into nature's circulatory system.

Perhaps it was preoccupation that caused me to dump too much dill into this salad. I suggest that if you decide to try this at home, you use less dill... 1/4 cup chopped fine, or use dried dill instead of fresh. The concept worked well (using the kohlrabi instead of potato) and will lower the calorie count of your potato salad.

Kohlrabi Potato Salad
2 medium red potatoes, cubed
3 small purple kohlrabi, peeled and cubed (can use green)
1/8 tsp salt
Put the above ingredients into a pot of water and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to medium and boil, uncovered, for about 16 min. Taste to make sure texture is desired (kohlrabi should still have a little crunch).
Drain water out and place mixture in a bowl. Heat 2 cloves minced garlic in about 1/2 Tbsp olive oil and 1/4 tsp salt. Before the garlic browns, pour over the potatoes and kohlrabi. Place the bowl in the freezer for about 10 min so that everything cools off before doing the next step.
Mix together with:
1 cup diced green onions
1/2 cup fresh dill, chopped (use less if you prefer)
1/4 cup mayonnaise
1 tsp cider vinegar
1/4 tsp lemon pepper (or 1/4 tsp pepper and some lemon zest)
1 tsp Dijon mustard
Salt and pepper to taste

Christina's vote: "This salad was like finding a potato in a haystack"