What with the [consider filling in some current events before you publish his one, then reconsider whether you really want to mention any of those things, and finally decide to just leave this note in to let readers feel like they've caught you being lazy and forgetting to finish a post before hitting "publish"] in the news lately, I'm sure we could all use something wonderful. That's why today we're looking at Wonderful Ways to Prepare Salads (Jo Ann Shirley, 1978). (And if you need even more wonderful things in your life, this was a predecessor to her Wonderful Ways to Prepare Crepes & Pancakes.)
What did Jo Ann Shirley consider "wonderful" in salads? She liked spice, as indicated by this Spicy Chicken Salad.
Correction: she thought she liked spice. If you were expecting a green salad topped with chicken fried in a crispy, capsaicin-rich coating, you were definitely on the wrong track. It took me a while to figure out what was even supposed to be spicy in this. I guess this fairly pedestrian chicken salad is supposed to be spicy because there's a little bit of chili sauce in the mayonnaise-and-sour-cream dressing. Woo!
Ms. Shirley also liked random additions to gelatin salads as much as anyone in the 1970s. I wasn't too shocked to see an Avocado Cucumber Mold.
I was a little surprised that it was based on lime gelatin, since most of her savory gelatin molds are based on plain gelatin. I was most surprised that she thought stuffed green olives were a natural pairing with the lime Jell-O.
She liked to have fun with gelatin in more ways than one, though. I can't help but imagine that the Avocado and Strawberry Salad looks like avocadoes got attacked by some knife-wielding maniac, staggered onto a salad plate, and died as their internal organs leaked out.
Okay, maybe that description says more about my imagination that Jo Ann Shirley's. Fair enough.
The author also seems to have been a futurist who foresaw that people in the 2020s might be able to work from home during an emergency. She also knew that employers would try to force workers back into the office once they got the all-clear. She was enough of a forward-thinker to think of ways that employees could fight back. That's why she developed Beany Egg Salad.
If you can imagine what the office would smell like after somebody brought Beany Egg Salad sandwiches for lunch... well, I think it's pretty self-explanatory why there might be second thoughts about bringing everybody back to the office again.
Okay, you knew I wouldn't think the salads themselves were wonderful, but they were a wonderful distraction from, well, [relist stuff from the introduction].
Since news headlines are fairly regional, I checked the flood gauges in my area. We still have another 29 feet to go before the dam overflows. Its only happened twice in the last 66 years. As long as it stays structurally sound, it can hold a whole lot more water. The city north of here is going to be testing out all of the flood mitigation infrastructure that has been built in the last 16 years. I wasn't planning on going downtown anyway.
ReplyDeleteEnough about the local headlines. I certainly don't want to share close quarters with the beany egg salad person, although they might encourage a return to masking. I still remember that the worst smell to ever come from someone's lunch was microwaved, leftover shrimp. That might get you banned to working from home permanently.
It's supposed to be about 90 outside tomorrow. Maybe I should have a nice, cool salad to eat. Or maybe I should bring something so horrifically smelly to work they will decide that maybe I should work from home until it cools off outside. Darn I already took a shower. Oh well, I can undo that with a 5 minute trip outside. I hope that the current events in your area are better than the ones around here.
I'm mostly just watching predictions for rainfall amounts and hoping they stay relatively low. The drain in my basement keeps backing up, but only on weekends for some reason, and it returns to normal by the time the plumber gets in here. He says he thinks he fixed it as well as he could without being able to replicate the issue, and then it does it again.... Right now, it's just an annoyance, but I worry what will happen if we get a major storm.
DeleteLooks like yet another person is (cautiously) peeping into the world of salads:
ReplyDeletehttps://www.cracked.com/article_42574_what-about-chicken-salad-actually-qualifies-as-salad.html
Ha! I appreciate the writer's willingness to call out things bound by mayonnaise! That's never seemed particularly salad-y to me either (big surprise), but I'm already so cranky that I've tried to stay away from making that point since it seemed universally acknowledged that mayo-bonded whatever counts as salad.
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