Winter Salad Variety

Under the category of Seasonal Favorites in the Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library box, card number one is entitled Winter Salad Variety. This seemed like an easy enough place to start, and I had most of the ingredients already. This would be my first Betty Crocker endeavor, and true to self, I began overthinking. I started my overthinking by taking a photo of the picture side of the card with my phone. I could then review the picture and plan out what I needed to get, even if the card itself was not handy. I studied the photo here and there over the course of a few days.

There were a few mysteries, however. For example, those off-white things in the bottom right corner. Water chestnuts? Cheese? Potatoes? And what is that thing in the middle upon which sits the cherry tomato? From the picture I discerned that this white mass rested atop the bottom on an onion, but what was the mass? The mystery mass of a focal point had slices removed from it, and in the gaps, slices of cucumber had been inserted. I had a turnip and turnips are white, so I was going to use a turnip regardless of what it turned out the recipe card said it was. (After the salad was made, I showed the picture to my neighbor and she said it was a mozzarella ball. At first, I thought she might be right, but the cuts seem too clean to be cheese. Doesn’t cheese often have rough edges when sliced?)

I’d reached the point where I needed to get on with making the salad instead of thinking about making the salad. So, I retrieved the actual card and looked at the instructions to see what those mystery ingredients were. Only, on the back, there are several recipes listed. Winter Salad Variety didn’t mean variety within the salad. It meant a variety of different salads.

AND NOT ONE OF THEM WILL PRODUCE A SALAD WHICH WILL LOOK LIKE THE PICTURE!

There is no mention of a meat product in any of the suggestions! There is no mention of hard boiled eggs anywhere! None of the listed ingredients and preparation of said ingredients will result in a cucumber/root veg/mozzarella ball/potato centerpiece! There is no mention of water chestnuts or cheese chunks or potato cubes!

Since the instructions and ingredient list resulted in no help whatsoever, I made some choices and some purchases and began.

I substituted beets for what looked to be strips of beef or pork. Beets, I thought, had a red color which would look vibrant on the platter. While not a beet lover, I had eaten roasted beets in fancy salads at restaurants. Ah, restaurant dining. How I do miss thee. I sliced the beets into strips, and the vibrant pink of beet juice promised to stain everything, so I quickly wiped down the counters and the cutting board. So much beautiful color! Yet, the vegetable itself did not look bright at all, despite the huge mess it was making. Maybe it would brighten in the oven. When I took them out, they were still dull with added shriveled-ness. I don’t know if it was the variety of beet I used, but I was slightly disappointed. Later, in the final stages of assembly, I would add radishes for a bit of red color. The beets tasted fine, though. I simply tossed them in avocado oil, salt and pepper and roasted them in the oven.

I had onions in the cupboard, but I was not putting copious amounts of raw white onions on a salad. There are three times that I remember enjoying raw onions. In fresh salsas, in the dirty martini salad I served at a dinner party, and in a mango avocado salad I took to a potluck. The two salad recipes called for raw onions, which I did add, though much more sparingly than the recipe called for, and I did find they enhanced the dish. I like to try a recipe almost exactly as is when I’m making it for the first time. I’m going out on a fairly unsteady limb with this new Betty Crocker endeavor. A firm no to the onions on this salad. Instead of onions, cauliflower. Both white. Totally fine.

(check out the recipe for the dirty martini salad and mango avocado salad here, if interested:
www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/spectacular-dirty-martini-salad/ and
www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/sunny-anderson/mango-and-avocado-salad-recipe-1941508)

I’m also not a big fan of hard-boiled eggs in a salad. Like with onions, I feel the taste is overpowering. I had Babybel cheese, and it turns out if you cut a Babybel round in half and top with a small amount of pineapple, it looks enough like an egg. It doesn’t taste anything like egg, of course, but the cheese does yield a similar texture and the pineapple adds a nice brightness.
Tomatoes and green beans, check and check.

I didn’t set out to make a carrot rose, but there were spirals of carrot haphazardly placed in Betty’s photo, and by the time I got the hang of it, I had a lot of carrot shavings. I just started putting together the peelings and before long a carrot rose bloomed before my eyes.

I decided to use pears for the mystery off-white blobs in the bottom right of the recipe card. I like fruit in salad from time to time. It feels special. It feels restaurant quality. It feels like rebellion on a plate. Strawberries may have been the first fruit I ever had on a salad. I would guess this happened in the nineties with the Strawberry Fields Salad from TGIFridays. My brain has decided to keep space for the name of a salad from a restaurant chain I ate at in college. Cheers. I did attempt the cucumber turnip amalgamation, but my knife skills and spatial relations were on vacation that day, so I did a floret looking centerpiece instead. All in all, not a bad endeavor. It looked pleasing and was delicious.

A few years back, my mother gave me the steak knives we used when I was growing up. They have dark wooden handles like the serving utensils shown in Betty's picture, so they came in handy for my photo. Bonus points awarded for being authentic to the era. I even oiled them so they would look richer in color.

To conclude: I felt a little duped, although lesson learned: read the actual recipe before hatching a plan based on just the photo. I’m not sure what makes some of the actual suggestions seasonally appropriate to winter, either. Several call for tomatoes, which I think of as a summer food. Same with pineapple, peas and zucchini.

Here are a few from the subcategory of “Serve on crisp greens; top with your favorite dressing.”

•mound of cottage cheese with diced green or red pepper, cucumber and onions
•chilled tomato halves; sprinkle with snipped parsley, chives, mint or sliced green onion
•shredded carrot, chopped sweet onion, chopped celery, grated orange peel and orange section

There are two listed under “Toss with greens and serve in lettuce cups.”

•sliced zucchini and cauliflowerets or thinly sliced radishes
•shredded parsnips, chopped sweet onion, chopped celery and pimiento-stuffed olives

And there are also suggestions for “Marinate and serve in lettuce cups.”

•cooked green peas and cooked French-style green beans, chopped green pepper, onion and celery; marinate in oil and vinegar dressing overnight.

The idea of a marinated salad or even serving a salad in a lettuce cup intrigues me. Maybe a follow-up trial down the road is in order.

In the end, I didn’t really need a recipe for making a salad. It’s one thing I know I can do successfully. If I’m serving a salad at a dinner party, I will pre-toss most of the ingredients, perhaps leaving the tomatoes on top as a garnish. Though initially skeptical of a salad served as components as shown in the Betty Crocker picture, a case could be made that people would be able to customize their own salad when everything is separated.
My ratings will be on a scale of 1-5 Red Spoons, 1 being the lowest and 5 the very best.

(Screen shot of iconic Betty Crocker red spoon logo taken from General Mills Blog. For full article check out the link below.)
https://blog.generalmills.com/2016/05/the-red-spoon-that-changed-betty-crocker/

I rate Winter Salad Variety: 4 Red Spoons (Photo not indicative of actual recipe, but deemed a success, nonetheless.)