If you're from anywhere other than Washington, Utah, you've probably never heard of Dixie salad, but it's a staple with my family. The tradition started back in the '90s (that would be the 1890s) - salads were very elegant back east, and apparently, my ancestors found a recipe for Waldorf Salad in Godey's Ladies Book or somewhere. It called for lettuce, apples, walnuts, and mayonnaise - which sounded frankly disgusting. My people being a practical bunch looked out at a landscape with a distinct lack of lettuce or walnuts and put together a concoction of apples, pecans, pomegranate pips and whipped cream - it was a hit, and we've been eating it ever since.
Some members of the family (heretics) have added bananas or other fruit, but we're purists. We used to get the pomegranates off the trees in Grandma and Grandpa's back yard (same with the pecans), but lately, we've been forced to make do with substandard store-bought. It's not the same, but we adapt - we're Adams women. Harvesting the pips today, I remembered when Grandpa taught me that it's so much easier if you do it underwater - the juice doesn't get everywhere, the pips sink to the bottom of the bowl and the debris rises to the top and can be scooped off easily. We've also sunk to the level of using Cool Whip rather than whipped cream, but hey - I figure all those Cool Whip containers in Grandma's cupboard (and fridge) had to come from somewhere, and if it was good enough for her, it's good enough for me.
(Sidebar: In searching for an image for Dixie salad, I found one poor deluded soul who actually included grapes and strawberries. That's just flat wrong.)
1 comment:
If you want to further ruin this salad, just because i had some this year, i put some chopped maraschino cherries. We liked them and they're pretty.
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