‘Salads’ Category

  1. Chilled Cinnamon Apple Salad

    November 21, 2011 by Tarrant Figlio

    My “big” kids grew up expecting a fruit salad or “fluff” for the holidays. Their grandmother on their father’s side served this I hear. But, my “little” kids grew up eating Red Hot Jello and expecting that for holidays. After a few years, this seems to have won out and I won over the big kids. It helps that I am the cook around here and red hot Jello is amazing.

    I do feel some guilt about subverting their tradition sometimes. That’s the sort of woman I am.

    Then I just saw this in Atlanta Cooks for Company, (1968) It combines some of the elements of Red Hot Jello with some of the elements of fluff. I suspect it could be a hit. Now, that doesn’t mean I am going to try it–but I might. You should though if you live in a fluff family but want more taste or a twist on the old favorite. With the cored apple presentation, you have the added bonus of a beautiful presentation.

    Chilled Cinnamon Apple Salad

    6 Tart Apples
    1 cup red cinnamon candies (“cinnamon imperials” or “red hots”)
    2 cups water
    1/2 cup Miracle Whip
    1 cup miniature marshmallows
    1/2 cup celery, diced
    1 cup dark seedless raisins
    1/3 cup chopped pecans

    Pare and core apples. Cook candies in water, add apples and simmer until tender, turning frequently. While apples are cooking, blend Miracle Whip with other ingredients. After apples have cooked until tender, drain and fill centers with Miracle Whip mixture.

    From Mrs. Jack Pipkin (Atlanta Cooks for Company, 1968)


  2. Space Age Salad

    July 8, 2011 by Tarrant Figlio

    STS135 launched today. The last shuttle flight brings a lifetime of memories up. My father was a NASA engineer. He worked at Goddard Space Flight Center. Dinner conversation consisted of the information Pop could share about the various missions. We watched launches without fail–though usually Pop was at work. If he wasn’t–the commentary on what actually was going on was amazing. Sometimes, after a launch when the coverage showed Goddard, I could pick Pop out of a room of similarly dressed, often bald, white men dressed in button downs and dress pants. There they sat behind primitive screens or stood watching blurry camera feeds with glowing green numbers feeding alongside.

    I was born between Apollo 11 and Apollo 12. I often growled growing up that my parents didn’t plan better so that I would not be in utero for the first moon landing. I am not sure that my parents ever understood the fact that I growled about that and then growled that my mother didn’t have me at Woodstock. It was a big year and I missed the good stories in my mind.

    But, the space program rolled on–some missions, Apollo-Soyuz, Viking, the fly-by of Jupiter and my father kept on working. He started to work on the shuttle program at some point–I don’t know when–I was a child and it likely was classified in any case.

    In 1981, a funny looking thing sat on the launch pad-the shuttle. My father was at work. Flight dynamics was his job. The launch went off. We knew to watch for the roll. We held our breath and bounced and it was off. My father came home and reported that there were people in the room surprised it flew. It made no sense but it did. Everyone in the program knew that, knew the risks, knew that these would forever be test flight stage. Yes, the space program like so much on the Internet is a permanent beta test. My father would come home with an impressive framed certificate for work on flights. I would try to convince my father that I could be an astronaut. His horror made no sense to me when I would talk about it. He loved the space program, he believed in it. Unfortunately, he was all too aware of the dangers and no one wants their child to sign up for that sort of danger. Ah well, I didn’t become an astronaut but I sit here typing on a laptop brought into being because of the space program. We wander the Internet because of it. We go out with our cell phones because of the space program. And now the last project my father worked on is now making its last mission.

    So a salad…space aged of course, because of the Tang! Of course, Tang these days has artificial sweeteners and isn’t the Tang of our youth. Like a space pioneer–try at your own risk.

    Tang Salad

    3 tablespoons Tang
    1 small box vanilla pudding
    3 sliced bananas
    2 cans fruit cocktail, drained
    1 can pineapple chunks or bits, drained, reserve juice

    Mix the Tang powder and pudding powder together. Add the pineapple juice. Mix in the other fruits. Chill or serve immediately.


  3. Cottage Cheese and Pineapple Salad

    May 15, 2011 by Tarrant Figlio

    Can you get any more retro than a gelatin salad with cottage cheese and pineapple? Well, yes, but not much more.

    Go on and give it a try. Remember though that you must use canned pineapple–fresh pineapple will not gel.

    Cottage Cheese and Pineapple Salad

    1 large can grated pineapple (translation for modern times: crushed)
    2 cups sour cream
    2 cups cottage cheese
    2 packages lemon jello
    1 cup hot water

    Dissolve Jell-0 in hot water. Cool until syrupy. Add other ingredients. Chill until set.


  4. Mock Chicken Salad

    October 8, 2010 by Tarrant Figlio

    For a couple where one person loves food and the other just will eat…sometimes, we have a romance that involves food in the oddest ways. Perhaps not. Doesn’t everyone have a food story that also speaks of love?

    One of the recipes Denise loves is my mock chicken salad. I make it with tofu. Once upon a time I used Yves Chickn for it, but that became unavailable. It started as a recipe either in my mother’s curried chicken salad (known as “Bird of Paradise Salad” ) and at a vegetarian restaurant (The Laughing Seed) in Asheville, NC restaurant where we landed on a mommy weekend early in our relationship.

    We sat as vegetarians in a restaurant full of options just for us and couldn’t make a decision. Vegetarians usually have it easy in the south–if there is a vegetarian option, there will be only one. Denise decided on the Mock Chicken Salad and when it came I said “Oh! It is just like my mom’s–except she uses chicken.”

    I then went home to find a vegetarian mock chicken salad, but decided to create it from how my mother made her chicken salad.

    It makes me laugh when I see recipes like the following for Mock Chicken salad. (and isn’t the picture a winner?) I so wouldn’t think “Hey, I am out of chicken, how about I make chicken salad out of veal.” Note, it does also recommend pork which I sometimes have left over. On the other hand, the whole shaping into balls totally makes this a no go in this house–even if the walnut eaters and olive eaters were the same people.

    Mock Chicken Salad

    2 cups cold veal or pork cut fine
    3/4 cup finely cut celery
    1/4 cup chopped walnuts
    2 tablespoons chopped olives
    Mayonnaise
    Lettuce
    Mix meat, celery, nuts, and olives.

    Add enough mayonnaise to moisten and shape in small balls. Arrange these balls on lettuce on individual salad plates. Garnish with olives and mayonnaise.

    (Another recipe from January 1923, from a feature called “Winter Salads” in Modern Priscilla.)