Fruits everywhere, lettuce in the chili, and salad penguins!

Since it's still salad season, let's go for another salad book. Well, Salads Cookbook (Favorite Recipes Press, 1969) to be precise.

The cover suggests there will be canned pineapple. Lots and lots of canned pineapple. The book does come through on that promise.

There's canned pineapple in dessert-y salads that sound pretty good, like Cheesecake Salad.

Of course this mound of dairy fat and sugar counts as salad! It has crushed pineapple, after all.

There's also canned pineapple in places where you might not expect it, like tuna salad.

Sorry, I meant Banana-Tuna Pineapple Salad. I'm not a good gauge because I hate tuna salad to begin with, but I'm guessing people who are more reasonable than I am might also blanch at the mayo-pineapple-banana-canned-tuna combo.

Not everything has canned pineapple though, not even all the "tropical" dishes. Tropical Lamb Salad is shockingly devoid of pineapple.

How does this not incorporate canned pineapple? I'd imagine it would be part of that classic combo of bananas, celery, lamb, mustard, mayo, olives, and almonds. 

The book also has some weird little riffs on actual classics. I'm used to taco salads that plop some kind of warm taco meat mixture atop a mostly-cold salad of lettuce, tomatoes, etc. I wasn't quite prepared for Chili Salad, though.

Mix a can's worth of hot chili into lettuce? That just sounds like a way to get sodden lettuce and lukewarm chili... I'm not sure the corn chips would be enough to save it.

How about I really cool things off and end with Antarctic Salad?

You might be wondering what makes this pork and veggie aspic Antarctic. Well, it's the last step, the step that turns a slightly snooty aspic (I mean, it starts with unflavored gelatin instead of sugary lemon or lime and it's flavored with curry powder and juniper berries!) into a fun afternoon craft project. This little mountain of pork and veggies is inhabited by penguins!

I'm really not sure how the red cabbage fits in with the penguins on an iceberg vibe, but I'm always excited by a recipe that ends with the instructions to "Arrange Penguins around mountain, serving 1 Penguin per person." 

Well, I'm also glad Mrs. Jessie L. Hawks kept the tropical fruits and chili away from the penguins. I'm sure they're more comfortable around their gelatinous little mountain, though now I'm thinking about how cute they might have been with pineapple ring inner tubes. Of course, if they were tubing down a river of chili, that would have taken it to a terrifying new level...