Tag: Salad

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Carrot and Macaroni Salad

Carrot and Macaroni Salad is basic. You would expect to find it or a variation thereof on dinner tables across the Midwest, or on buffets at Church suppers, or as the dish someone brings to your house after you have suffered a loss. Looking into the noodley-creaminess with flecks of bright orange, you expect to be somewhat underwhelmed, but comforted by the flavors.

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Let’s discuss expectations.

View of Carrot and macaroni salad

We all have them, even when we think we don’t. When we feel delighted it’s because something met or exceeded our expectations and disappointment is caused by our expectations not being met. Frequently, it’s not even our expectations that matter, but it’s the expectations others have of us.

Why do I bother explaining this when people are simply looking for a recipe? It’s because Carrot and Macaroni Salad defies expectations.

In previous posts about gelatin, we have discussed how my gelled dessert experience was nearly ruined by old ladies who sadistically topped fruity desserts with a thick, creamy layer of…mayonnaise.

Carrot and Macaroni salad has a similar creamy surprise, except in this case, you expect the creaminess to be mayonnaise and instead it is mayonnaise combined with an entire can of sweetened condensed milk and a 1/4 cup of sugar. It is tempered a little with the addition of onion and vinegar, but not much.

This dish dares you to make it.

“It can’t be that bad,” you say to yourself as you whisk together the dressing.

“This is a lot of vegetables,” you reason as you chop.

“Everyone likes pasta salad.” you reassure yourself as you set the dish on the table.

You may even call your mom for reassurance before dinner is actually served.

“Oh, I remember that salad,” she might say, “I’ll be interested to hear what you think of it.”

You prepare everyone. “This is one of great-grandma’s recipes. Nana says she’d like me to take a picture of everyone as they try it. This is going to be fun. Even if someone spits it out, everyone needs to try it because Nana really wants pictures.”

(I did not include the family pictures in this post, but I did send them to my mother)

Your daughter takes her first bite. She has fewer preconceived notions about what pasta salad should be than anyone else. She smiles. You snap the pic.

Next is your husband. You manage a picture of his grimace as the first bite touches his tongue.

Neither of your sons attempts to hide their reactions. Nana is getting great footage.

Finally, it’s your turn. It is in that moment that you wish you had a dog.

The cloying sweetness invades your mouth and coats your tongue.

“At least I cooked the noodles well” you think as you bite down into a perfectly cooked macaroni.

The carrot is less sweet than the dressing and provides a pleasing crunch. Green pepper’s astringency strips the top layer of frosting from your tongue allowing the flavors of onion and vinegar to penetrate.

It’s like a barn dance in your mouth. Your chews emulate the stomping of feet and the flavors swirl like a do-si-do.

The side of your mouth tilts up as your brain processes, but only one side.

It is not the worst thing you’ve eaten. It’s somewhat palatable and you even understand what the recipe originator was trying to do. However, it doesn’t conform to more modern ways of vegetable prep. It’s heavy.

After dinner that evening, as we cleaned the kitchen. “Hey, what container should I put the salad in?” one of my boys asked.

“The garbage can” my husband and I replied in unison. “No one is going to eat that.”

The Recipe:

Carrot Macaroni Salad Recipe

Carrot-Macaroni Salad

A sweet pasta salad with vegetables
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Course Side Dish/Salad
Cuisine American

Ingredients
  

  • 16 oz Cooked Pasta Whatever shape appeals to you
  • 2 Cups Mayonnaise NOT Salad Dressing
  • 1/4 Cup Vinegar
  • 1/4 Cup Sugar
  • 1 Can Sweetened, Condensed Milk
  • 2 large Carrots grated
  • 1 large Onion finely chopped
  • 1 Green Pepper finely chopped
  • salt to taste
  • pepper to taste

Instructions
 

  • Combine mayonnaise, vinegar, sugar, and sweetened condensed milk into a large bowl.
  • Add remaining ingredients and stir to combine.
  • Serve immediately or refrigerate to allow flavors to meld.

Notes

Keyword Carrot, Pasta, Salad, side dish

For much better side dishes, try Unexpected Side Dish: Sour Cream Lima Beans, Pistachio Salad, and French Potato Salad for an Elegant Picnic

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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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Popovers and Frank Lloyd Wright

A recent road trip without children inspired these popovers.  

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The kids are gone for the week. The house is quiet. My husband and I are both sleeping through the night. We are eating what we want when we want to.  Our meals have had a lightness to them that we generally don’t have when we are sharing with kids.  It’s refreshing to not be on someone else’s schedule.  

One day, we drove out to Spring Green to eat lunch at Taliesin. It was the perfect mix of great food, history, art, and murderous mayhem in a place that was supposed to be a “cozy” love nest. If anything that ended up with 101 rooms and 18 bathrooms could ever be called cozy.

We opted not to do the tour because as much as I love Frank Lloyd Wright architecture, I wasn’t ready to immerse myself in a 2-4 hour guided experience.

Taliesin is across the road from a park on the Wisconsin River.

After ordering our lunch, we snagged a table near the window and watched a woman throwing frisbees to her dog into the river as we sipped our shandies and quietly discussed the murders.

“This is the third version of the house,” I explained to my husband.  “The first two versions burned down.”  

“Did the murders happen in the first or second house?” He asked.

“I’m not really sure.” I replied.  Our food arrived as I told him about Julian Carlton.  “No one is quite sure what happened that day.  I believe I read that the servants were fired and were supposed to be returning to Chicago.  Things didn’t go according to plan.”

I ate a bite of my cheese puff stuffed with seasonal salad.  This one contained romaine lettuce and gooseberries lightly tossed with a lemony dressing.  I marveled at the perfect simplicity of our lunch.  The cheese puff was choux pastry with shredded local cheddar.  The cheese browned more than the rest of the puff to create a lovely crispness that contrasted with the creamy pastry.  

“This is the perfect light lunch.” I explained. “I don’t know that I could ever make something like this when the kids were around and expect them to feel like it was enough of a meal.” I knew the kids would eat them the same way they eat popovers, but they wouldn’t be satisfied with just cheese puffs as a meal.

Across the table, my husband was trying a bite of the chilled peach soup before starting in on his pork and grits.  He nearly moaned with pleasure as the pureed peaches filled his mouth.  “You’ve got to try this.”  

I thoughtfully dipped a perfect russet French fry into the mustardy aioli (not a dijonaise).  “I want to knit this ceiling.”  

My husband looked at me like I was crazy.  This is not unusual for us.  

“No,” I explained.  “You’ve got to squint a little bit to see it as a flat shape.  Look at the way the white and the wood create a herringbone pattern. But pieces of wood frame the white.  Then at the peaks, you get a small red stripe above each of the wood pieces.”  

I’m not sure he ever really saw what I did, but it doesn’t matter.  I don’t have the right colors of yarn to pull it off at the moment anyway.

After an incredible lunch, we looked around the visitor center a bit.  We remarked on the low ceilings.  I’m guessing they are 7 feet tall.   I later read that this design element may have been to soothe FLLW’s ego.  Apparently the architect was short in stature.  One can conjecture about the power he felt making tall men stoop.  

We visited the gift shop and marveled at the items for sale.  On top of decorative objects, there were house numbers, ties, socks, sticky notes, puzzles, and jewelry.  We ended up with a book about the murders.  Partially because it started with a mention of Ed Gein.  

“This was a nice drive.” My husband said to me as we got in the car.  “We should do this more often.”

“How soon do you think it’ll be before mom will take the kids again?”  I asked.

We smiled at each other.  His eyes lit up and softened as he looked at me.  We both understood that it wouldn’t be soon enough before we visited again. At least we got inspiration for new meals and new ways to make popovers.

The Recipe:

Instead of making choux pastry, try these popovers.  Add shredded cheese to the recipe to recreate my lunch at Taliesin or serve plain with jam. 

Popover Recipe

Popovers

Old fashioned Popovers to serve with a meal or stuffed with salad for a light lunch.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes
Course Bread
Cuisine American
Servings 8 Popovers

Equipment

  • Muffin Tin or Popover Pan

Ingredients
  

  • 3 Eggs
  • 1 cup Flour
  • 1 cup Milk
  • 3 TB Butter Melted
  • 1/2 tsp Salt

Optional

  • 1/2 cup Cheese Shredded

Instructions
 

  • Beat eggs slightly. Add flour, milk, butter, and salt. Beat until just blended (or use a blender). Pour into a well-greased muffin tin or popover pan. (I heat the tin in the oven and melt extra butter in the bottom of the tins.) Bake at 375° for 40 minutes.
Keyword Bread, Popovers

If you like this recipe you might like to try Breakfast Pops, Danish Pastry, Apple Date Bread.

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Marinated Mixed Veggie Salad

You know how every once in a while I make something and you think to yourself, “Why in the heck did anyone make that in the first place?” and then you think “And why did she feel the need to repeat it?”.  Just remember, I’m trying some of these things out so you don’t have to. (Not that you’d really want to sometimes…)

Now before you get too excited, this recipe is not an actual failure.  It’s just another so-what recipe and I’ve been sitting on it for a while.  Let’s see what I can do to make this a lot more exciting for all of us.Marinated Mixed Veggie SaladIt was a dark and stormy night and all the frozen vegetables were sitting around the campfire… Nope, too scary.

I slowly bent into the freezer and grasped the bag of veggies with one hand.  I turned my head to look over my shoulder and asked the man standing behind me, “Is this what you wanted?”  Has the potential to get really inappropriate.

 

Once upon a time, in a land of frozen vegetables, Princess Corn was lonely, so she invited her friends Peas and Carrots.Seriously?

Why do Jolly Green Giant vegetables taste funny?  Because he stands over his corn and peas…

Yeah, maybe not. Maybe just a few helpful suggestions:

  • If you don’t want to fully cook your vegetables, at least thaw them before adding everything else.  Just trust me on this one.  Like I said, I did the research for you.
  • More substantial and different textured vegetables may work better.  Think things like California blend instead of just regular mixed vegetables.  Or some of the blends that include beans.
  • Better yet, use some fresh veggies and forget about the frozen ones.
  • There is a lot of dressing on this salad.  You can cut the recipe in half unless you feel like soup.
  • Unless you like mush, don’t used processed cheese.  And even thinking about what my great-grandma may consider cooked vegetables, it may be mush regardless of the cheese.
  • Add anything with any texture at all to this.  Bacon crumbles, perhaps?
  • If the recipe is followed, you will have about 11 servings too many of this salad.

This recipe, as I made it, is all sad trombones.  It may not even be as interesting as that.  It will probably nourish your body to a degree, but it will do nothing at all for your soul.  Maybe it’s good diet food?  You’ll get bored enough eating it that you’ll lose your appetite all together?  Having already tried the 4 Bean Salad, I can see how different versions of this salad could easily sing. This one is completely tone deaf.Marinated Mixed Vegetable Salad

 

 

 

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Hot Chicken Salad

We had friends over for games the other night. I made great-grandma’s recipe for whiskey slush (recipe to come later).  This led into a conversation about this blog and why I started it.  I commented about making my children try all of the recipes (not whiskey slush) and how sad it is that we don’t continue to make some of the recipes, but some of the recipes, like egg foo yung, should just be left in the past.  “Why doesn’t anyone eat Hot Chicken Salad any more?”  John lamented.  Our friends turned to look at him.  “What is that? I mean, I know all of those words and what they mean, but what is hot chicken salad?”  “Is there macaroni in it?” another friend asked.  “Nope.  It’s all chicken and mayo and celery and onions and peppers all cooked up together with stuff on top.  Well, one recipe is.  I have something like 4 of them and I’ve only made two at this point.”  So in honor of my friends, old and new and a long, complicated story of friendship beginning in 1986, I present to you the first of 4 recipes of hot chicken salad.DSCN2952This hot chicken salad is nostalgic in flavor and presentation.  The potato chips and swiss cheese on top screams “your grandma made this.”  She probably did, depending on the age of your grandma.  This is the sort of food that would’ve been served in elementary school cafeterias while I was growing up.  It probably made its way onto the buffet table at church potlucks in towns all over America.  Diners would put this on their menu as as a daily special.  It’s like the chicken equivalent of a tuna melt.  DSCN2954This is the innocent food of a time we think of as simpler than the times we have now.  In some ways, maybe it was.  When life gets complicated and you want to go back to grandma’s house and just forget that you have to deal with the real world, go grab a rotisserie chicken and make some hot chicken salad.  It isn’t going to help you get that promotion at work.  It won’t do your housekeeping.  It won’t pay a single one of your bills.  But it might remind you of a time when you didn’t need to worry about any of those things, either.  Hot Chicken Salad (2)

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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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BLT Salad

I still have a few tomatoes clinging to the vines in my garden.  There are plenty of green tomatoes that I should pick and use to make Green Tomato Mincemeat or Fried Green Tomatoes.  That might come later.  I’m clinging to the skirts of summer, pulling on the hems, begging it not to leave quite yet.  There is so much preparation that has to happen before winter and so little daylight to do it all. DSCN2914Rather than dwelling on the melancholy of passing time, I’m going to grab another ripe tomato and make this salad again.

 

There is a movement going on right now called “Will It Waffle?”.  In his book Daniel Shumski answers this question over and over to delicious ends. DSCN2916

I believe this salad was created with a similar thought in mind, and probably before Mr. Shumski was even thinking about waffles.  Everyone has had BLTs.  There is that pleasure of biting into the crispy toast and having the tomato juice combine with the mayo as it drips down your hands.  Saladizing the classic sandwich gives it a bit of elegance.  You can serve it in a bowl, eat it with a knife and fork.  It instantly becomes fancy food.  It’s not just a salad, it’s a Panzanella.

Take one last bite out of summer.  Find that last red tomato and make this salad.  Fancy it up with a good loaf of Italian or French bread.  Use your favorite bacon.  Get out your fancy dishes and eat this salad.

DSCN2917BLT Salad

 

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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

 

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Sweet and Sour Bean Combo vs 4 Bean Salad

It’s time for the ultimate showdown.  The world holds its collective breath and waits while the final verdict is determined.  In the battle of the beans, who will come out on top?  A bean dish served warm with a cooked sweet and sour sauce, or a dish served cold (like revenge) with a simple shaken dressing?

It may be surprising to learn that I don’t actually remember eating bean salad until last summer.  I’ve seen it on potluck tables my entire life.  Who in the Midwest hasn’t?  Usually nestled in there between some cheesy potato casserole and a layered Jell-O salad.  The thing is, bean salad of any variety does not look that interesting.  The colors are kind of clashy.  It kind of has that look of a 70’s kitchen.  It just doesn’t look like it would actually taste good.  And everyone knows that we eat with our eyes first.

Ok, so these two recipes have a lot of similar ingredients.  Both use kidney, wax, and green beans.  The Sweet and Sour Bean combo allows for fresh.  The 4 bean salad calls for cans.  This is not major.  Either could be switched out for the other (except good luck finding fresh kidney beans).

DSCN2426

The cooked dressing in the Sweet and Sour Bean Combo calls for using the liquid from the beans.  Do NOT use the liquid from the can of kidney beans.  It does nothing for the texture of the sauce.

The 4 Bean Salad, as you will notice when you look at the recipe, calls for 1 can of kidney beans, 1 can of green beans, and 1 can of wax beans.  There is no fourth bean unless you count serving it to a human bean.We discussed options for 4th bean. You could use both dark and light kidney beans or throw some edamame in there.  Garbanzo might be ok.  I think I’d veer away from canned lima, but frozen/thawed might be ok.  And realistically, it was probably supposed to be called 3 Bean Salad, but people get moving too fast and write things down without thinking and then never bothered to change it.

DSCN2631

The overall flavor of the cold 4 Bean Salad is much better than the hot Sweet and Sour Bean Combo.  The only thing we liked about the Sweet and Sour Bean Combo was the kidney beans.  This is not good.  You should not make food where you only appreciate one ingredient of the finished dish.  We tried it again the next day to see if the flavor improved.  It didn’t.

Make the 4 Bean Salad.  Add another bean if you like.  I might think about reducing the sugar and using fresh beans.  This salad is light and refreshing.  It’s a compliment to whatever meat you are serving, but can also be used as an ingredient in a larger salad.

Slice the onion thinly. Consider cutting it into half moons instead of rings.  It all depends on how much you like large pieces of onion.  If you are using olive oil instead of another type, you may end up with chunks of cold oil in your salad.  This is perfectly normal. As the temperature rises, the chunks will melt back into oil.  If you prefer, you can pretend it’s oil “caviar” and you have performed some feat of molecular gastronomy.

The Recipes:

4 Bean Salad

This 4 bean salad recipe from my great-grandmother only calls for 3 types of beans. Leaving the 4th bean up for interpretation results in many interesting combinations on this classic salad.
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Course Side Dish/Salad
Cuisine American

Ingredients
  

Salad

  • 1 can Green beans
  • 1 can Wax Beans
  • 1 can Kidney Beans
  • 1 Onion Sliced thinly

Dressing

  • 1/2 cup Vinegar
  • 1/2 cup Salad Oil
  • 3/4 cup Sugar

Instructions
 

  • Mix salad ingredients in a large bowl. Mix dressing ingredients separately. Pour over salad. Refrigerate overnight.
4 Bean Salad
Sweet and Sour Green Bean Combo

For more great recipes check out Green Beans Paprikash, Perfect Picnic Baked Beans, and Deviled Green Beans.

Pinnable image for 4 Bean Salad
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Cooked Cranberry Salad

I am not a Jell-O girl.  I don’t care for it and have probably eaten more of it while making recipes for this blog than I have my entire life.  I’ve certainly made more of it.  And there are so many recipes left to go.  I am debating investing some serious money in ring molds and individual molds at the thrift shops nearby.  You know, all of $10 maybe.When I was a young girl, I read a book by Lois Lenski called Berries in the Scoop.  I was intrigued by the notion of cranberry bogs and how cranberries were harvested.  In the story a little girl loses her grandmother’s pin in the cranberry bogs and ***Spoiler alert*** after she falls on the ice and injures herself while ice skating on the bogs she finds it and they all live happily ever after.  Or maybe they do.  I mean, once you injure your ankle it never goes back to exactly how it used to be.

Anyway, everyone eats cranberries during the holidays and I am no exception.  We are a real cranberry family and don’t eat the canned stuff.  My sister loves cranberries when they are fresh and raw and mixed with orange and just enough sugar to take a little of the tart out. I prefer mine slightly sweeter and a little more cooked.  Occasionally when it’s not the holidays I’ll have a glass of cranberry juice with or without vodka, but I ignore cranberries in their hydrated form for most of the year.  I think most of us do.  Dried cranberries are a different story all together.  This might change that.

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First of all, this recipe calls for unflavored gelatin.  This means no artificial colors or flavors if you care about that stuff.  It means that the only flavors you are going to get out of it are the ones that you put into it.  Because it was July when I made this recipe I wasn’t going to get fresh cranberries, but I had some left in the freezer that someone brought me back from one of the Cranberry Festivals and that I was going to take to my sister’s for Thanksgiving and forgot. I think I had also offered them to my mom, but forgot to put them in her cooler also.  I guess maybe I was fated to use them for this recipe.This recipe is beautiful.  There is something about that deep red color.  John says this recipe reminds him of really good fruit cocktail.  It’s somehow light and refreshing despite having that tartness of cranberries.  The pineapple adds sweetness, the nuts add crunch and depth. The grapes just lighten everything up.  Serve this up with some whipped cream.  Or be like Caroline and dip your pork chops in it.  It’s a good side for roasted meats.

 

The Recipe:Cooked Cranberry Salad
For other great salad recipes try:  Sunshine Citrus Cups, Tropical Delight Salad, Fluffy Orange Salad.