Bizarre Salad Bazaar

Here’s a list of what not to do to improve a salad.

Give a banana even more surface area with which to react to the air and turn brown by scoring it with a fork.

Mix dark, bitter salad leaves in with your sweet, light leaves, which will confuse people, thinking that some of your salad has started to rot.

Yum — salty onion juice scrapings!

Bananas are very sweet. Olives are not. Do not mix bananas with olives.

Raw cranberries are best cooked.

Everybody loves the surprise of finding bits of grated walnut between their teeth, or under their dentures, especially those with nut allergies. If you’re lucky, you’ll have a bunch of those walnuts whose shells have not come all the way off, providing the extra pleasure of rock-hard granules for added texture.

Do not serve “salad desserts,” even when you want to make your dinner gay.

Many a finger was lost to the careless carving of radish roses.

If your salad looks a bit lackluster, you can easily give it the high-calorie touch by adding nuts and candied fruit.

Banana Salad Bazaar, Meloripe Fruit Company

Is That A Banana In Your Pocket…

Click to enlarge

…or is he just pleased to see you?

There once was a lady named Alicey

Who had on her hand a big callusy

A banana was bought

To cure it she thought

But it turned out to be a big phallusy.

Oh well, she could always make this dish if she still wanted to stretch her meat.

Please address your complaints to the wastepaper basket. These jokes write themselves.

Bananas Take a Bow, The Meloripe Fruit Company

Also from this book: That's Bananas!

Crazy Bananas

If you live in the Anglosphere, you will no doubt be aware of the Tooth Fairy, who appears undetected in the night to collect a child’s lost tooth from underneath his or her pillow, replacing it with money. While a child’s propensity for belief in magical creatures is at its peak during those early years when milk teeth fall out, by the time said child is a veteran of the dental cycle, he or she is far more likely to simply go along with the pretense just to score a little cash.

The Tooth Fairy has been plying her trade for many hundreds of years with astounding reliability, though it behooves an inexperienced parent not to set the bar too high with the first tooth by being overly generous with the coin (and yes, the Tooth Fairy leaves actual metal coins, she is not so louche as to carry bills). Doing so will inevitably encourage uncomfortable and possibly harrowing conversations with your child regarding the health of the Tooth Fairy’s bank balance and where on earth she gets all her money should her contributions to your child’s piggy bank dwindle. (American children receive on average $2.60 per tooth, though not in loose change.)

Eventually the child will no doubt discover a trove of baby teeth in the parent’s bedside table once they become curious enough to start exploring those parts of the house deemed off-limits in order to find the alcohol, porn and sex toys their friends have convinced them must be there. It is debatable which is more psychologically damaging for the child: to find damning proof that their parents lied to them all those years about the Tooth Fairy’s existence or to uncover a hefty, lifelike silicone dildo in Mommy’s drawer. Such are the potential hazards of family life.

In Spanish-speaking places (the Spanglosphere? The Hispanosphere?), the Tooth Fairy comes in the form of a mouse, which in days of yore might have been a little closer to the truth. Elsewhere, teeth are thrown to the ground or up into the air in order to persuade the powers that be to make the child’s new teeth grow in straight. One might argue that the English ought to have adopted that tradition instead.

Here is a recipe to encourage the Tooth Fairy’s (or the Tooth Mouse’s) good work.

The Chinese-Kosher Cookbook, Ruth and Bob Grossman, 1963

Also from an expended version of this book: How Very Schmaltzy, Are We Done? , The Case of the Missing Swine

That's Bananas!

Location: Pearly Gates

Date: Today

St. Peter: Hello. Thank you for your patience. This won’t take long. Just a few questions, things to clear up, that sort of thing.

Chef: Sure.

St. Peter: OK, good. I see it says here that you are responsible for this dish that appeared in a recipe pamphlet  some years ago.

Chef: Ah, yes, that would have been me.

St. Peter: Bananas Take A Bow

Chef: Yep, that’s the one.

St. Peter: You are aware, are you not, that bananas cannot bow?

Chef: Right, right. They can’t. I was being funny. Look: on the cover — they’re dancing. Bananas can’t dance either. It was a joke. I’m sorry.

St. Peter: That’s OK, I was just playing with you. Jerking your chain. Get you to loosen up a little. You look nervous. Dancing bananas are funny. I always found people slipping on banana skins to be hilarious. Cracks me up every time. 

Chef: Ha ha.

St. Peter: You can do better than that, man.

Chef: HA HA!

St. Peter: That’s more like it.

Chef: If that’s all then…

St. Peter: Ah, no, it isn’t. There’s just one more thing.

Chef: Oh, OK.

St. Peter: You have a recipe in here for something called a Banana Salmon Salad.

Chef: I believe I do, yes. 

St. Peter: Are you out of your f*cking mind?

Chef: What?

St. Peter: Bananas and Salmon? Are you serious? And pickles? And pineapple?

Chef: It seemed like a good idea at the time.

St. Peter: People never cease to amaze me.

Chef: Bananas had been rationed for so long after the war . . . . Once the markets opened up we were encouraged to put them in everything to bump sales. It was banana-this, banana-that. Yes, we have no bananas was a thing of the past. The original filling in Twinkies wasn’t vanilla crème; it was banana.

St. Peter: Yes, I remember that. Much nicer, in my opinion.

Chef: Right, so —

St. Peter: Look: I hate to break it to you but this is a disqualifying act. I can’t let you in. No can do. Rule #743: Thou shalt not insult God by mixing the fruits of His labors in an unnatural manner.

Chef: Thewhatnow?

St. Peter: You heard me.

Chef: But —

St. Peter: Bananas come from hot climes. Salmon from cold. The two aren’t supposed to mix. God, in His wisdom, put them miles and miles apart so things like this wouldn’t happen.

Chef: But people do it all the time. It’s called fusion cooking.

St. Peter: Con-fusion, more like. We’re working on that. We sent someone down to put an end to it.

Chef: Who?

St. Peter: Some guy named Gordon Ramsey. He runs Hell’s Kitchen. We poached him. Gets the job done, but his methods leave a lot to be desired.

Chef: Bloody hell!

St. Peter: Yes, I was going to suggest you try there next. Sorry mate. Rules is rules. Next!

Bananas Take a Bow, The Meloripe Fruit Company

Also from this book: Is That A Banana In Your Pocket...

Banana-Cheese Dressing

There are some flavors that have become part of the culinary canon because they are so complementary it seems as if the Lord in His wisdom made them for one another. Tomatoes and oregano. Lamb and rosemary. Chocolate and salt. Brie and figs. Fish and lemon.

Bananas and cheese is not one of them.

The person who snuck a spoonful appears to agree since they unfortunately regurgitated it onto the apples entombed in orange Jello rather than the green glass plate put there for the express purpose of catching unwanted bits.

Salad Book, Better Homes and Gardens, 1969

Also from this book: Salmon Avocado Mold, Ham Cabbage Mold, Wash Your Mouth Out With Soap