Canby’s Cutsforth’s Market made national headlines this week when it was revealed that its locally famous Elsie’s Own Potato Salad, long believed to have been created by store co-founder Elsie Cutsforth, was actually developed by freshman Republican Congressman George Santos, of Long Island, New York.
Santos made the surprise announcement in a press conference Friday morning, explaining that his unique ethnocultural background of Brazilian and “Jew-ish” had combined to create the perfect mixing pot for that foundational cornerstone of Americana cuisine: potato salad.
Santos said he met the Cutsforths when they visited New York City for an International Grocers Association conference in 1994. Santos, who was 6 at the time, traded his prized potato salad recipe for an Abba-Zaba bar and a half-pound bag of jojos.
“I have the recipe right here,” Santos told the crowded room of stunned reporters, waving a folded sheet of paper. “I could show it to you, only I’m not gonna, because then it wouldn’t be a secret. I also gave them the idea to start making doughnuts, by the way.”
Santos said Glenn and Elsie Cutsforth had quadruple-atomic-ultra-pinky-swear promised that they would use the recipe for only for private events and not attempt to profit off of it.
And indeed, research by The Canby Current confirmed that Elsie Cutsforth began by making her famous potato salad for the Macksburg and Canby rod and gun club mixers back in the 1960s, several decades before Santos was born.
Alas, Canby’s beloved matriarch did eventually renege on the deal, adding Elsie’s Own Potato Salad to the Cutsforth’s Market deli menu in the early 1990s, where it quickly became her most famous dish.
Santos said he only recently became aware of the double cross, having been busy inventing the cure for polio, breaking the Major League Baseball records for most home runs and stolen bases in the same season, and becoming the first congressional representative to EGOT.
He admitted that he had considered legal action, but dropped his claim when the Cutsforth family agreed to change the name of their signature dish to Georgie’s Own Potato Salad and replace Elsie’s face with a portrait of Santos.
“I’m still a little shell-shocked about the whole thing,” store owner Frank Cutsforth confessed. “I always thought that was Mom’s recipe. But who am I to argue with the guy who undid Thanos’ snap at the end of Avengers: Endgame?”
