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!

Next Best Thing to... or Better Than...dessert

This creamy layered pudding dessert has been a crowd pleaser  since the 1970's when it was called "The Next Best thing to Robert Redford", later versions of the recipe were called "Better Than Robert Redford". I've never heard what  Robert Redford thinks of this dish named after him, but in our community it is a popular dessert for pot lucks and group dinners. This week our UMW served it, in lemon and chocolate flavors, for the high school honors dinner. Since this was a group of teens, perhaps we should have called it "Next Best Thing to Justin Bieber".

THE NEXT BEST THING TO ROBERT REDFORD

Recipe from UMW cookbook (adjusted for more crust)

1 ½ cup flour

¾ cup butter or margarine, melted

1 cup finely chopped pecans

1 (8-oz) pkg. cream cheese, softened

1 cup powdered sugar

1 (12-oz) whipped topping

1 (3-oz) pkg instant vanilla pudding

1 (3-oz) pkg instant chocolate (or lemon) pudding

3 cup cold milk

For crust, combine flour, butter or margarine and pecans. Press into the bottom of a 18x12-inch baking pan. Bake in preheated 350 degree oven for 15 minutes. Cool completely. Blend cream cheese with sugar; spread over cooled crust. Spread half of the whipped topping (6 oz) over the cream cheese layer and refrigerate. In mixing bowl, combine both pudding mixes with milk. Beat 2 minutes on medium speed. Set aside until thickened. Spread thickened pudding over whipped topping layer, then top with remaining topping. Garnish if desired with chocolate, nuts, or both. Cover and refrigerate overnight.

Church Ladies handle this dessert well. 

Six pans of RR dessert served around 100. 

Cookies for Any Weather

What do you do on a cool, rainy, spring afternoon? I bake! Last weekend I wanted to be outside in the flower beds and enjoying spring weather but the temperatures were cooler than many days we had in February. So baking made the day seem warmer and more friendly, and my family certainly appreciated it! And then, when Sunday brought the most beautiful weather, we enjoyed cookies and milk on the deck.
It's forecast to be rainy again this weekend, so here are two of my favorite cookie recipes for you. I've used this Chocolate Chip recipe for several years and it is the best I've found! The addition of an instant pudding mix seems to keep the cookies soft and adds a nice flavor. And the oatmeal even makes them seem a little healthy. I often vary the flavor of pudding mix with the season - lemon pudding mix and white baking bits for spring; chocolate pudding mix and white baking bits; or in the fall, pumpkin pudding mix and cinnamon baking bits. I recently saw a new pudding mix flavor, Red Velvet, in the grocery store that I'm anxious to try in these cookies.
The bar cookie recipe is a new one this year. I've searched for the 'perfect' Blond Brownie recipe for a while, and this may be it. As an Extension Educator, I was once asked the question "How do you keep cookies from going stale?". I was stumped! Cookies never have the chance to get stale at my house and it's hard to imagine that happening. I hope you enjoy these recipes as much as we do.

CHOCOLATE CHIP OATMEAL COOKIES

 1 cup butter, softened  (I use 1 stick butter, 1 stick margarine)

¾ cup white sugar

¾ cup brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

3 cups quick-cooking oats

1 ¾ cups flour

1 package (3.4 oz) instant vanilla pudding mix

1 teaspoon baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

1 cup (1/2 bag) chocolate chips

Combine the oats, flour, pudding mix, baking soda and salt. In a large mixing bowl, cream fats and sugars. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Gradually add the dry ingredients to the creamed mixture. Stir in chocolate chips.

Drop by rounded teaspoons onto ungreased baking sheets. Bake at 375 degrees for 12 minutes or until lightly browned.  Cool.

Chippy Blond Brownies

6 tablespoons butter, softened

1 cup packed brown sugar

2 eggs

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

1 ¼ cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

½ teaspoon salt

1 cup (6 oz) semisweet chocolate chips

½ cup chopped pecans

In a large mixing bowl, cream butter and brown sugar. Add eggs, one at a time beating well after each addition. Beat in vanilla. Combine the flour, baking powder and salt; gradually add to creamed mixture. Stir in chocolate chips and pecans.

Spread into a greased 11p-in. x 7-in. x 2-in. baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 25-30 minutes or until a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean.

Cool on a wire rack.