Perfect boiled eggs and other secrets

As I lean into the lazy dog days of summer, I'm relying more on the fresh local produce available in my neighbourhood and turning to a list of summer classics: roasted corn, homemade burgers, and potato salad.
I make a warm potato salad throughout the year, dousing freshly boiled potatoes in a vinaigrette of lemon juice, olive oil, mustard, garlic and herbs on a regular basis.
But in the summertime, my thoughts revert to the childhood delights of an old-fashioned creamy potato salad.
Over the years, I've refined my approach to creamy potato salad and have learned a few tricks.
The first trick is to save a little bit of the hot potato water, draining all but about a tablespoon after the potatoes are fork tender.
The second trick is to immediately douse about a quarter of a cup of vinegar on the hot potatoes, so they soak up the flavour. I prefer to use organic apple cider vinegar, but regular white vinegar or white white vinegar both work in service of the humble potato.
The third trick emerged out of a need to make good use of the wealth of chives growing in my backyard. I chop a handful of chives and throw them into the handy dandy Magic Bullet with a clove of garlic and a cup of olive oil and give it all a whirl. The result is the ambriosia formally known as chive garlic oil. I keep a small jar of it on hand to flavour fresh summer salads, dip warm breads into, and I also drizzle about a quarter of a cup onto my hot potatoes when I mean to make creamy potato salad.
The next trick involves a kitchen basic: How to boil an egg. I adore creamy potato salad with chopped boiled egg, but over the years have been chastened by my tendency to leave the kitchen and wander back to my computer to work while I'm boiling eggs. More often than I care to admit, it's my nose that tells me I've strayed from the kitchen too long. I've boiled eggs till they were petrified. I've boiled eggs till the water completely evaporated. For a while, I began to think I was utterly hopeless.
And then Martha Stewart schooled me. The secret to the perfect hard boiled egg, she wrote, is to bring the eggs and water to a rolling boil in a covered pot for one minute. Then turn to stove off, leaving the lid on the pot, and let the eggs continue to cook with no heat source for 12 minutes.
At the 12-minute mark, drain the eggs and rinse them in cold water or do as Martha would: set them in an ice bath (a thoughtful act that's just a little too precious for me).
No more ring around the yoke. My eggs come out perfect every time.
With the potato base and boiled egg tricks behind me, it's time to make the star of the show -- the creamy dressing.
I take half a cup of mayonnaise, half a cup of sour cream (you can substitute plain yogurt), one very healthy tablespoon of dijon mustard, a teaspoon of apple cider vinegar, salt and pepper to taste, herbs if you've got 'em, and two chopped green onions. Stir them together and you have a creamy salad dressing that beats anything you'd buy at the grocery store.
Once the potatoes are cooled, add chopped boiled eggs and dress the works with the creamy dressing and refrigerate until picnic time.
Voila -- summer!