Memes don’t last long on the internet, which is why few people are in a rush to take “planking” photos or make a Harlem Shake video here in 2016.
But two years after Zack “Danger” Brown raised a massive $55,492 on Kickstarter to make a bowl of potato salad, we’re somehow still talking about one of the more audaciously cheeky crowdfunding efforts in history — which just hit its final project stretch goal.
Co-written by Teresa Blackburn, The Peace, Love & Potato Salad Cookbook is a recipe book sent out to everyone who pitched in $50 or more as part of the original campaign — or anyone else who wants to buy one individually, for that matter.
“When this all first started, I just wanted to make a traditional potato salad,” Brown told Digital Trends. “This book goes way beyond that: There’s a breakfast potato salad, seasonal-appropriate potato salads, everything you can think of. You’ll be eating potato salad all year round.”
A couple of years removed from his original potato salad fame, Brown, a 33-year-old software engineer, still doesn’t have the perfect explanation for why his $10 request struck a chord with people.
“There are no black-and-white answers for why something becomes popular on the internet,” he says. “I think it had something to do with the fact that it had a backlash, then another backlash, then a backlash to that backlash and so on. When people heard that I was asking for money on Kickstarter to crowdfund a potato salad, there was an initial reaction. Then when people saw that others were giving money to it, every dollar added seemed to make it bigger, crazier, and more outrageous. It just kept building and building.”
Still, it seems like everything was worth it — because the end results can be seen in the lavishly illustrated new book, which will have you whipping up “Blue Cheese Baby Beet Potato Salad” and “Salt-Cooked Fingerling Potato Salad & Garlic Cilantro Mojo” in no time.
Just don’t ask people to pay for you to make any of the recipes. It’s been done, you know.
