and More Salads - Crunchy Corn Salad

Spring seems to be Salad Lunch Season in our community. And a salad can be anything - main entree, side dish, or dessert. Everyone's recipe collection has a wealth of salad recipes, but we always seem to be interested in more!
The definition of salad is a dish consisting of a mixture of small pieces of food, which may be mixed with a sauce or salad dressing. They are typically served cold, although some are served warm. Salads may contain vegetables, fruits, cheese, cooked meat, eggs, grains and nuts.
Salads are always good for a covered dish dinner, and corn seems to be a favorite flavor of spring and summer; so this recipe is a hit! The ingredients list specifies Hellman's mayo. We often ask about subsisituting Miracle Whip for mayonnaise in recipes. They are different. Miracle Whip is made by Kraft foods, and they keep the ingredients a secret. But they do admit that the oil content is too low to be considered mayonnaise. The mixture gets its sweet and spicy flavor by having more sugar and seasonings than mayonnaise. For some recipes and preparations, you can make the switch, but Miracle Whip isn't always the best substitute for the mellower flavor of mayonnaise.
One substitute I did make in this recipe was to use frozen corn. As I stood in front of the canned vegetable section of our grocery unable to find shoe peg corn, I remembered why I hadn't made this recipe before. But I thought the change to frozen corn worked well. You could also use 2 cups of fresh corn cut from the cob.

Crunchy Corn Salad

2 cans shoe peg corn, well drained (or 1  package/14.4 oz frozen)

3-4 ribs celery, diced

1 sweet bell pepper, seeds and membranes removed, diced 

6 green onions, chopped, green and white parts both

1 – 1½ cups Chili Cheese Fritos, broken a bit

1 cup shredded cheddar cheese

Dressing

⅓ cup Hellman’s mayo

⅓ cup plain Greek yogurt

1 ½ Tbs. cider vinegar

2 Tbs. granulated sugar

kosher salt and freshly ground pepper, to taste

In a large mixing bowl, combine dressing ingredients; add vegetables and cheese. Toss to coat all ingredients. Just before serving, add Fritos to salad.

A Recipe for Fun - Play Dough

Sometimes the most popular recipes aren't the ones for meals you've planned. Recently at a session of Great Late Start, we made play dough and the kids were asking for the recipe to make at home.
When I made it with my grand daughter, she was delighted to have her own batch. It is also fun to see how the consistency changes as you dissolve the salt and mix in the flour. If it doesn't get to the 'kneading' consistency with 1 cup of flour, just keep adding more until you can handle the play dough without it being too sticky. Any lumps will work out with the kneading.

COLORED PLAYDOUGH

1 cup water
1 tablespoon vegetable oil
1/2 cup salt
1 tablespoon cream of tartar
1 cup flour (white all-purpose)
food coloring

Combine water, oil, salt, cream of tartar and food coloring on a saucepan and heat until warm. Continue to stir and heat until salt is dissolved.
Removed from heat and add flour.
Stir, then knead until smooth. You may need to add more flour to make it firm enough to knead. It seems that several factors affect this, such as humidity. Keep stirring and kneading in dough until it is not too sticky for little fingers.
The cream of tartar makes the dough last 6 months or longer, so don't omit it.
Store the dough in an airtight container or a sealed plastic bag.

keep mixing in flour until the right consistency is reached

kneading - fun for little hands

It makes enough for several play activities or to share with a friend. 

Good practice for learning to use a knife - plastic, of course!

Or a child-sized rolling pin.

Or just playing with shapes.

We Do Salads and More Salads

Girlfriends, fashions, salads, and fancy tables. What a fun way to spend Saturday.  P.E.O.'s benefit luncheon for the local Relay for Life, happened today. Fifteen tables decorated with themes from casual Hawaiian picnic to formal black tie were presented for dining enjoyment. Three tables of salads offered many favorites and ended with a luscious coconut cake. Followed by a fashion show  provided by a new-to-most-of-us store from another town. And the best part? A few thousand dollars to donate to the American Cancer Society for cancer research. As several of the cancer survivors present evidenced, medical research has made great advances, with more to be made. We support that!




The salad buffet included many of my favorites and some new ones. It was hard to remember which I was sampling as I enjoyed the plate of flavors. Especially tasty was the cheese roll. Sweet dough like a cinnamon roll, but with butter, Italian dried herbs and shredded cheese filling and topped with shredded cheese slightly melted. I'll try that for a later blog.



My salad bowl was empty when I picked it up after the luncheon, so it must have been a hit. It is a recipe I enjoy and will take to other covered dish events. Thanks to recent weather in California, the price of cauliflower made some of my favorites impractical to make, but broccoli didn't seem to be affected as much. This salad combines sweet and tart flavors of Granny Smith apples, dried raisins and cranberries, red onion, Greek yogurt and apple cider vinegar. I think you'll enjoy it also.

BROCCOLI APPLE SALAD

 4 cups small-diced broccoli florets

2 Granny Smith apples, cored and diced

1 cup walnuts

1 cup matchstick carrots, roughly chopped

⅓ cup golden raisins

⅓ dried cranberries

⅓ cup thinly sliced red onion

Dressing:

¾ cup plain Greek yogurt

⅓ cup mayonnaise

1 ½ Tbs. apple cider vinegar

¼ cup honey

pinch of kosher salt

In a medium mixing bowl, whisk together yogurt, mayo, vinegar, and honey; season to taste with salt.

In a large bowl, toss together broccoli, apples, walnuts, carrots, raisins, cranberries, and red onion. Drizzle with desired amount of dressing, tossing to coat. Serve at once. (Since this was to be a luncheon and I needed to do the prep the evening before, I waited until time to set the salad on the serving table to mix in the dressing.)

Lots of chopping. I did this the evening before.
The chopped apple was rinsed generously with lemon
juice to prevent browning. 

Mixed salad ingredients ready to refrigerate. 

Dressing ingredients ready to refrigerate for
mixing the next day. 

Our table was elegantly set. Thank you Robin
and Teresa!