Tag: Pineapple

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Pistachio Salad

The last thing the internet or the world really needs is another recipe for Pistachio Salad. We’ve all made it and eaten it a thousand times. So why am I posting this?

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My recipe isn’t different than any of the other recipes except maybe that it calls for Dream Whip instead of Cool Whip. But honestly, I don’t know that that makes any difference to the dish. One could substitute homemade whipped cream and pretend to be fancy. A garnish of crushed pistachio pieces elevates the dish.

Photo of Pistachio Salad

But really, that’s all crap. The reason I chose to write this post is because Pistachio Salad is one of my grandma’s favorite salads. You see that white dish in the photo? I got that from my grandma. As long as I can remember it was sitting on the right side of the dark shelf framing her kitchen window.

Now it lives on a shelf above my dining room window. It is surrounded by lovely bits of china that I’ve gotten from my grandma, my mom, and various friends. It makes me smile (even more when it’s filled with grandma’s salad in my herby fairy garden).

Disclaimer: I took these photos last summer. We didn’t actually make this pistachio salad today, yesterday, or even this past weekend.

I spent last weekend visiting my grandma. It was a long overdue visit.

When my grandparents lived less than 2 hours away, I took the kids up to visit fairly often. Often I’d do little more than sit in grandma’s kitchen and talk to her while the kids were playing with grandpa in the basement.

I sat at the table while grandma cooked. She even let me help at times. I told her all about my life. I told her the good things, the bad things, and the really ugly things. She didn’t give me great advice or ease all my troubles, but talking to her helped.

The conversation was not one-sided. She told me about the adventures she and grandpa had. When the boys were young, grandma and grandpa had adventures on the road. They drove around to Amish quilt shops and other places. I asked Grandma about things in her house or her cookbooks and she would be able to tell me where everything came from.

Around the time I got divorced, the conversations changed. The trips all over turned into weekly trips to Appleton to do some errands and to go to the movies. When my youngest was born, they took their last trip to my house.

I have the most beautiful picture of grandma on that day.

Photo of Pistachio Salad

Grandpa never came to my house again. Grandma came one last time with the aunties. I left the baby with them and went to get the boys from school. The baby cried if anyone except grandma looked at her.

Years pass as they do and grandma and grandpa decided the upkeep of a home was more than they wanted to take on in their 90’s. They moved 5 hours away and my heart was broken.

For 3 years, I didn’t visit. There were a million excuses. Mostly related to work and scheduling weekends with the boys’ dad.

I started calling them every other week. I gave grandma the updates on my lilacs and my gardens. I’d listen to grandpa talk about his latch hook projects and the books he was reading.

Photo of Pistachio Salad

Somewhere along the way, things changed. Grandpa isn’t himself any more. He answers the phone, but I need to introduce myself every time. I am asked the same questions. He tells me that he’s living in an assisted living center. There is no indication that he remembers that I helped him move. He can’t remember the word for “latch hook”. But when I say “Caroline” his voice lightens and he laughs. Within a few minutes he calls Grandma to the phone. “Dorothy, there is someone who wants to talk to you.” I know he says “someone” because he can’t remember my name.

Grandma gets on the phone and sounds so good. She sounds re-energized and I realize how much taking care of the house and grandpa had taken out of her. After I ask about her projects, she tells me that she’s taken up latch hook. “I forgot how enjoyable it was.” After filling her in on the kids, I promise to call in 2 weeks and hang up the phone.

Two weeks go by and I call grandma again. Except this time, I called my aunt’s phone. Grandma would hate me telling the world this, so we’ll just say she wasn’t quite her best self. I explained the situation to my friends, to my therapist, to my family, and decided that I needed to figure out how to see my grandma.

She lit up when we showed up. Her joy was comparable only to that of my husband at the birth of my daughter. My daughter, without hesitation, climbed up next to her great-grandma to be snuggled. One son held grandma’s hand and told her how much he loves her. The other son was a bit shy, but readily accepted hugs.

With more planning, I probably would’ve brought grandma a pistachio salad, but we brought flowers instead.

The Recipe:

Pistachio Salad Recipe

Pistachio Salad

Quick and easy, sure to please Classic Pistachio Salad is a soothing elixir for nostalgic souls.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Total Time 15 minutes
Course Dessert, Salad, Side Dish
Cuisine American

Ingredients
  

  • 1 pkg Instant Pistachio Pudding
  • 1 cup Milk
  • 1/2 pkg Miniature Marshmallows
  • 1 pkg Dream Whip Prepared
  • 1 small can Crushed pineapple Drained

Instructions
 

  • Make pudding according to instructions on box.
  • Prepare Dream Whip according to package instructions.
  • Fold all ingredients together and refrigerate.
Keyword Dream Whip, Fluff, Pineapple, Pistachio, Pudding

If you like this recipe, you might also like Cranberry Fluff Salad, Butterscotch Bars, and 24, 24 Hour Salad.

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Pineapple-Rhubarb (sp)Ring

It’s been a long time coming this year, but spring is finally here. My rhubarb erupted out a few weeks ago. It is almost ready for using. I started assembling all of my favorite rhubarb recipes and came across this gem. Pineapple-Rhubarb (sp)Ring.

Pineapple-Rhubarb sp(Ring). Is another one of great-grandma’s red Jell-O mold recipes. I’m becoming oddly fond of these.

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Once a week, we gather with a group of friends to do pub trivia. Our group ranges in ages from late 20’s to mid-70’s and has everything in between. This ensures that we have a wide base of knowledge across generations. It means we can answer most questions.

Except sports. We’re really not good at sports.

“Put the following basketball players in order from shortest to tallest.”

Most of us had heard of one or two of the names on the list.

“Which ones of these quarterbacks have won the Heisman Trophy?”

(Quarterbacks qualify to win that award, right?)

We excel on questions about pop music. One of our dearest friends can tell you what the number one song was on the day you were born.

There is a charming older man on our team who knows world history, US history, geography, and music before about 1985. When we were new to the team, we asked if he was sure about an answer. “Yeah, I was there,” he said. We went along with his answer. He was right.

Another question came up on a different day. “I was there.” He said. Again, he was right.

Now, whenever he is sure of the answer, someone says “Doug was there.” This is the response to him knowing about everything from Washington crossing the Potomac to which President had which number of children to where Steve Jobs was conceived. It doesn’t matter what it is. If Doug is sure, he must’ve been there.

Pineapple-rhubarb Ring

The other night at trivia, a question was asked about when Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule.

“Oh!” I exclaimed excitedly. “I was actually there.”

Doug knew the answer, but I really was there.

In 1997, I applied for and got the opportunity to teach English and travel for 6 weeks in China. I was in college. I majored in International Relations. It was an obvious opportunity. It was my second time on an airplane. I knew no one.

Before we went into mainland China, we spent a few days in Hong Kong for some training and to assimilate a little bit. We needed bonding time as a group and time to recover from jet-lag before embarking on the teaching part of the trip.

Everywhere we went in Hong Kong, there were red and gold banners celebrating their reunification with China. They were in Chinese, so I couldn’t read them, but that’s what our translator told us. The atmosphere seemed festive, but that might’ve just been the energy of the city.

While there, we walked around the night market. We ate breakfast at a place that had an enormous butter sculpture of a dragon. To get into our private dining room at a restaurant, we had to walk through the kitchen where they were in the process of slaughtering chickens.

It was in Hong Kong that I had dim sum for the first time. I ate a chicken foot.

When we arrived at our destination in China, I was willing to accept the explanations of the food we were given.

“What is this?”

“Traditional Chinese dish. Eat, eat.”

“But what is it?”

“Meat. Eat, eat very good.”

“What kind of meat?”

“Oh, I do not know name. Eat, eat, very good. Traditional Chinese dish.”

What in the world does any of this have to do with Pineapple-Rhubarb (sp)Ring?

Pineapple-Rhubarb Ring

I ate pineapple in China. I experienced new foods and tried familiar foods in new ways. It may have been part of the catalyst for trying all of these recipes.

I realize, of course, that not everyone can travel to Hong Kong during a pivotal year to have the opportunity to say “I was there” 22 years later at a bar doing trivia. And you can’t go back in time to say “I was there” when this salad was first introduced. But you can feel like you were there by making Pineapple-Rhubarb (sp)Ring to go with your first grilled dinner of the season.

When someone asks you, “What is this delicious thing I am eating?” You can answer “Traditional American food. Very good. Eat. Eat.”

The Recipe:

Recipe source

Pineapple-Rhubarb Ring

A delicious sweet and tangy red molded salad to brighten up any spring table
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Setting Time 3 hours
Total Time 3 hours 15 minutes
Course Side Dish
Cuisine American
Servings 8

Ingredients
  

  • 1 can Pineapple Tidbits about 2 1/2 cups
  • 2 cups Fresh Rhubarb cut into 1 inch chunks
  • 1/3 cup Sugar
  • 1/2 cup Water
  • 2 pkgs Cherry flavored gelatin 3 oz size (or 1 large)
  • 1 TB Lemon Juice
  • 1/2 Cup Pecans Broken

Instructions
 

  • Drain pineapple and reserve syrup. (Ideally, you'd drain it into a glass measuring cup that has room enough to add more)
  • Combine rhubarb, water, and sugar into a small sauce pan; cover and cook until tender. This will require more time for slightly older rhubarb than for freshly picked young rhubarb.
  • Drain thoroughly, reserving syrup. (Add it to the pineapple juice. This is why I told you to make sure the cup is bigger than you'd need.)
  • (And this is where the measuring cup part comes in.) Add enough water that combined syrups and water equal 3 ½ cups.
  • Heat to boiling. (At this point just throw it in the microwave. Don't bother getting another dish dirty)
  • Add gelatin and stir to dissolve.
  • Add lemon juice and cool.
  • Chill until partially set. (If you are lucky, this instruction applies to you as well as the gelatin. But I usually use this time to get other things done, which is why my gelatin gets too hard at this point. It's smart to set a timer for about a half hour.)
  • Fold in rhubarb, pineapple, and nuts. (It's like 007 instructions. "One Jell-O salad. Folded not stirred.)
  • Pour into a 6 cup ring mold. (Let's be honest here, you can pour this into anything that'll hold 6 cups or even into a bunch of smaller containers. Don't let these people tell you how to mold your salad.)
  • Chill until firm. (See instruction above on chilling.)
  • Unmold onto greens. Serve with mayonnaise. (Really, do not serve this with mayonnaise. I mean, if that's what you do, fine, but I prefer anything that is not that. Sweetened whipped cream, vanilla sauce, rum sauce, pineapple sauce. Just not mayonnaise unless you really like that sort of combination. Or do the hardcore rebellion thing and use no sauce at all.)
Keyword Jell-O Salad, molded salad, Rhubarb, side dish

And you can trust me on this. I was there.

If you liked this recipe, you may also want to try Something Different Rhubarb Salad, Rhubarb Dream Dessert, and Secret Rhubarb Dessert.

Pinterest graphic for Pineapple-Rhubarb Ring
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Holiday Confetti Salad

When I was a very small child, my mom dressed me up in my blue and white polka-dot coat and took me to see Santa.  She did not go up to Santa with me, but my brothers did.  We sat on Santa’s lap and told him what we wanted for Christmas.  When we returned to my mom’s side, she took my brothers aside and asked them what I told Santa I wanted.  Disgustedly, my 4-year old brothers told my mom I wanted a blueberry birthday cake.

A picture of me ran in the paper that year.  I’m wide-eyed as I held up my knitted mitten to greet Santa.

40 years later, my eyes aren’t that wide.  I still wear blue and white polka dots.  I still have odd conversations with old men, although not usually while sitting on their laps. My brothers are still confounded by me, but less disgusted.  Any knitted mittens I wear now, I knit myself.  The request for blueberry birthday cake has become a request for much more practical things.  (And I’m adult now, I’ll eat blueberry birthday cake any time I want to, I don’t have to wait for Christmas.)

This is where it would be completely awesome for me to whip out my recipe for blueberry cake of some sort and tell you all that it makes Christmas dinner perfect, but, sadly, I don’t have that recipe in my collection.  What I do have, though, is Holiday Confetti Salad.

Doesn’t that just sound like a party in your mouth?

(Insert your favorite dad joke here about “throwing” this dish together or “tossing” the salad.  You know, because of “Confetti”.)

You know, when I think Christmas dinner, I don’t think about crown roast or fruitcake (although I have some of that sitting in sherry getting ready for Christmas), I just imagine cutting into a nicely molded congealed salad.  Holiday Confetti Salad does not disappoint.

Lime, celery, pineapple, and cherries combine with cream cheese and whipped cream to create a pale green cloud flecked with small red bits.  The Holiday Confetti Salad is quite festive looking, especially when garnished with more maraschino cherries and celery leaves.

I made this before I had proper molds, so the only pictures I have of this beautiful salad are in a glass bowl.  I’d love it if someone else made this and posted pictures for me to see.

The Recipe:

If you like this recipe, check out Fluffy Orange Salad, 24, 24 Hour Salad, Something Different Rhubarb Salad, and Blueberry Salad Mold.

 

 

 

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Pineapple Teriyaki Meatloaf

I have had a few forays into making Japanese food before on this blog.  For instance, the egg foo yung that I attempted to feed my family. (I’m not sure they’ve forgiven me for that yet.)  By contrast, this looked relatively tame.  I got to choose my own meatloaf recipe for starters.  I like to use this one by Ina Garten.  Or something sort of like it.  Let’s be honest here, until I started this blog, I very rarely ever followed a recipe exactly.I made this meatloaf on a day when I was feeling extra prepared for the next day.  The thought was that if I had my menu planned for the week and some of the meals prepped and ready to go, life would be easier.  I was so proud of myself that I forgot the rules of meat and pineapple until it was too late. This rule was mentioned before when talking about Tropical Delight Salad.  Pineapple contains enzymes that cause it to do things like tenderize meat.  It’s great for things like al pastor or anytime you are trying to tenderize a large piece of meat.  It’s not good for ground meat. (I used to make al pastor frequently in my crock pot.)

Ok, so that being said, we aren’t talking about anything that was majorly disgusting.  The meatloaf didn’t turn into slime or anything like that, it was just a bit softer than I like.  If you do need to make this ahead, don’t add pineapple juice while making the meatloaf.I suppose that now you are wondering about taste.  Pineapple teriyaki meatloaf is pretty delicious.  It makes a nice change from a ketchup and brown sugar top.  The leftovers make a fun sandwich.  We served it with mashed potatoes and Marinated Mixed Vegetable Salad.

Recipe

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Pork Chops Jimmy

The recipe opens with the line “Son Jimmy’s favorite pork dish.” It’s things like this that prick my imagination.  Who was Jimmy?

He probably wasn’t Jimmy Ray.

I can’t quite imagine Jimmy Ray eating a pork chop topped with apples, maraschino cherries, and brown sugar.  But I have a feeling that the Jimmy that these pork chops were named after was a Groovy Teen.  How could he not be?

I originally made this recipe in the fall when my apples were ripe.  If you don’t know about my apple trees, you can find out more about them here and here.  I made so many apple recipes at the time, but figured that you may not want to read about nothing but apples, so backlogged this one.  

The pork for this recipe came from the sale bin.  I love seeing what is in the reduced meat section of the grocery store.  Sometimes there are things like beef shanks or pork neck bones.  I love to get those cuts of meat and slowly cook them until they fall off the bone and have made magical gravy to serve over mashed potatoes.  Usually I’ll throw some garlic in there to roast.  That either gets incorporated into the sauce or spread on homemade bread.

None of which is relevant to this recipe.  I only brought it up because I did not have 3/4 inch pork chops.  I had tiny little thin cut pork chops because they were on sale.  

That part is important because thin pork chops cook much quicker than thick cut pork chops.  Which means that they can overcook quickly if you aren’t watching them.  Nobody likes a dry pork chop.  To try to mimic the effect of the thicker pork chops, I sandwiched an apple slice between layers of pork.  I feel like they were still a little dry, but not too bad.  It wasn’t quite that experience of biting into a nicely marbled pork chop on the bone where the fatty edge is just sort of melting into the rest of the meat.  (And all the vegetarians that are accidentally reading this are cringing).

This is a solid meat and potatoes sort of dish.  It’s sweeter than I like an entree to be, but not so sweet you feel like you need insulin.

Speaking of potatoes…I ran into Target while my husband stayed in the car with the kids (one of whom needed a nap like you wouldn’t believe).  While he waited he read an article of genius facts or something like that.  When I got back in, he attempted to impress me with the fact that everything in the world could be labelled as a potato or not a potato.  Of course I started brilliantly discussing how not everything we label as a potato is actually a potato and yams and sweet potatoes are not the same thing.  Then I asked “Would it be a better classification if we labelled everything as “tuber or not tuber?”  To which my clever husband replied “That is the question.”  I retorted that that wasn’t funny, as I laughed and he snort-laughed next to me.  We never fail to amuse ourselves.  (If you don’t get why this was not funny, review Hamlet).

And don’t serve sweet potatoes as a side dish for this meat.  It’s just too much sweetness.

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Sky Rockets at Night, Tropical Delight (Salad)

You know those days where you just feel like a tropical vacation would cancel the subscriptions to all of your issues?  Where you just sort of want to run away and be responsible for nothing and no one? I don’t.  I’ve never had one of those moments in my entire life.  I have never wanted to sit on a sunbaked beach with nothing around but the sound of waves crashing.  Never wanted to relax with an icy drink in my hand brought to me by a super cute cabana boy with a slim, tanned body, who I know is not just something pretty to look at, but should be respected for his mind and his hustle.  Never have I ever not wanted to get up early every morning, make sure that everyone is doing what they are supposed to do while I try to get myself ready and do what I can to prepare us for the evening.  The very idea of not having to commute and…I can’t go on.  If someone told me that I was going to be trading all of this for an all-expenses paid trip to a tropical island, I might hesitate while I decided if I really wanted to go swimsuit shopping.  I’d probably try to find a bunch of excuses as to why I really shouldn’t, but I don’t think I would pass it up.  Tropical Delight Salad top

As I stare out at my snow covered yard and see my children cuddled up on the couch in matching blankets, I realize that while I would love to get away, the closest I may come for a while is probably going to be in something like the Tropical Delight Salad.

I have always been attracted to tropical flavors.  Pina Colada and I have been hitting it pretty hot and heavy since I was a young girl.  When picking out yogurt with my mom, I would always opt for the pina colada fruit on the bottom yogurt.  It seemed like a special treat.  After realizing that the red food coloring in Jolly Good Fruit Punch and Faygo Red Pop made me throw up, I discovered Jolly Good Pina Colada soda.  They don’t even make it any more, but there is something about that sickly sweet pineapple coconut combination that satisfies me.  Sadly this recipe does not call for coconut, but it would be a nice addition, especially if it was toasted.Tropical Delight Salad gnomesAnd now I have an idea for a roasted pineapple and toasted coconut something…cocktail? Bread?  Meringue Pie?  This is an ongoing problem.  I start out doing something and then get majorly inspired by something completely different and get too excited to start that and want to forget about what it was I was doing in the first place.  I am working harder at trying to finish things before I start something new.  It’s killing me in my knitting right now.  The biggest problem I have is that I have too many ideas and there is only me that can carry them out.  It’s all just time and money, right?Tropical Delight Salad Chinese LanternOk, back on track.  A couple of things to note.  Pineapple tidbits or crushed pineapple probably works better than pineapple chunks.  And if you haven’t read the Jell-O package (and these are small ones, not big ones in this recipe), do not attempt to use fresh pineapple.  Most tropical fruits contain enzymes which counteract the gelling property of gelatin.  If you want something like a slimy soup, that’s probably fine, but even despite my protests of not caring for Jell-O, I still prefer it to be gelled.  The enzymes are useful for other things, though, like tenderizing meat (mmmm…al pastor). But this is also the same thing that makes some people very sensitive to eating too much raw fruit. Tropical Delight Salad angleAlso…The topping of the Tropical Delight Salad is really good.  Don’t skip that step.  Even if you decide you want to change the flavor of the Jell-O, or decide not to use bananas, or oranges, do not change the topping.  Tropical Delight Salad

If you are hardcore on Jell-O recipes and want to see what else I’ve done, check out these posts.  Cooked Cranberry Salad and Frosty Lime Salad.  If you really want to gelatinize everything check out the Peach Cottage Cheese Loaf.  (Although I don’t actually recommend making it, but you should see that this exists.)

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Frozen Salad

Frozen Salad Recipe

Growing up, we had these great neighbors with whom we always had fantastic potlucks.  Our neighborhood was really a fantastic place.  The 4th of July picnic involved an all-neighborhood water fight and blocking off the street.  A writer I knew even wrote about it.  I’m not sure if it’s in his published works or not, but I intend to read his books to find out.

As much fun as July 4th was, it was Thanksgivings that stick in my mind.  There were green salads with chickpeas in them.  It seemed exotic to me at the time.  (Note to self:  start doing that more again).  My mom would make sweet potato rolls.  There was enough variations of the traditional foods that it seemed like passing the food almost took longer than eating it.  The crown jewel of the meal, the thing that seemed the most impressive in that whole meal was the frozen fruit salad.  It was always done in a ring mold and had canned fruit cocktail and bananas and whipped cream and marshmallows. DSCN2425At the time, I had no idea that this version of frozen salad existed. For some reason I associate butter mints and salted peanuts with old ladies (or ladies that seemed very old when I was very young).  The addition of canned pineapple and marshmallows combined into a creamy frozen Jell-O salad solidifies that feeling.  It’s both disgusting and wonderful all at the same time.  One of those guilty pleasures.  The nuts add a bit of crunch and texture.  The mints kind of bring everything together and make it really refreshing in an unexpected way.

 

When I made the salad, I realized partway through my freezing that I had forgotten to add the mints.  I ran downstairs to the freezer expecting that the salad would be frozen solid and there would and I was going to have to figure out a workaround, but it turned out that when we moved the freezer, someone had plugged it back into the wrong outlet and the power strip had tripped.  This meant my salad could easily be saved.  (It hadn’t been very long, so everything else in the freezer was saved also.  Not like that other time when I suddenly had to cook 3 pounds of ground beef, some ribs and some chicken.)

 

When you look at the recipe, there is something written next to the word “Jell-O”.  It looks like “clay”, but is probably “cherry”, but I didn’t know, so we used lemon Jell-O.

Sorry for the lack of pictures on this post.

A word of caution, this is a dessert salad.  You can serve it along with your regular meal, but it is very sweet.

Frozen Salad

Frozen Salad

1 large pack small marshmallows
1 pack Jell-O (the small box)
1 large can crushed pineapple

mix and refrigerate overnight.
Crush 1 pack butter mints.  Mix with 1 cup cream whipped.  Add nuts.  Mix with Jell-O and freeze.

 

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Frosty Lime Salad

Frosty Lime Salad

Another post with bad pictures, but I have to get rid of the backlog and I’m really not going to remake some of these so I can have better pictures. 

The kids and I went to the grocery store and got a bunch of packets of Jello knowing that I would eventually need them.  I had read through recipes and just got the things that I knew were popular flavors or things that I had seen.  So in the cart went Cherry, Orange, and Lemon.

We can start to enumerate my mistakes here:

  1. Going to the grocery store with 3 children
  2. Not having a good list.
  3. Buying things because I would probably need them someday.
  4. Not menu planning properly.
  5. Not realizing that when the old recipes call for packets of Jello, they mean the small packages and not the big ones.

DSCN2708

All of this is preparation for what happened next.  I had my old camp friend and her family coming over for dinner.  It was the first time she was seeing our new house, I had just started the idea for my blog and was excited about all of that.  And so I planned a menu that involved only recipes from my collection.  And what could be more representative of what I was trying to do than to make a Jell-O salad?

 

Looking through the ingredients I had in the house, I decided that Frosty Lime Salad sounded about perfect.  Except I didn’t have lime Jell-O.  I figured it wouldn’t matter that much if I substituted lemon.  But then I made the mistake of mentioning that I made the substitution after talking about my intention was to follow the recipes exactly as written.  And because I only had huge boxes of Jell-O, the recipe was doubled.  I might have gotten teased a bit.DSCN2719Frosty Lemon Salad is refreshing in a way you wouldn’t normally think of.  Cucumbers fresh from our garden, and celery make a nice counterpoint to the sweetness of the pineapple.  I did not serve with lettuce and cherries.  The creamy layer was a bit loose, as you can see.  No one complained that this was gross, so it must’ve been ok. (Mom just told me that it was Martin VanBuren and his set that coined the term O.K., who knew?)DSCN2722Frosty Lime Salad