Salad Daze

 

Child’s Play

Shakespeare’s contributions to the English language are legion; one of these is Cleopatra’s comment upon her romance with Julius Caesar, which she describes as “My salad days, / when I was green in judgment, cold in blood….” Note the repetition of the idea of “green,” meaning raw and innocent, as are nature’s new shoots. She regrets her affair as the naivite of youth, before she knew better. The term “salad days” has come to refer to the carefree time when one could just have an affair with the Emperor, or simply be young and stupid. 

 

This Creamy Fruit Salad is merely stupid. Instructions include tinting the whipped cream pink with food coloring. Why? I can hear the grapes whining in that particularly weary teenagers use when they are embarrassed by their parents, as they attempt an escape over the side of the bowl. They’d like the strawberries to join their rebellion, but the strawberries, still under Mom’s sway, remain posed with a sickly sweet smile, only faintly aware of their complicity in this tragic enactment of the end of culture as we know it. 

 

 

Creamy Fruit Salad, The Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library, 1971

The Ides of Salad

Ista quidem vis est

Post-war Europe, licking its wounds, decided that the best way to scour the past was to design the future to look completely different; less socially divisive, more socialist. To replace the ruined grand palaces that represented the classist states, architects embraced Brutalism, a no-frills, utilitarian approach that foregrounded structure and raw materials over classic proportions and beauty. This was a style that purported to celebrate the common man, unadorned by the baggage of history, a tough, and no-nonsense kind of person who saw buildings for what they were: simply structures in which to conduct the necessary business of life. After all, look where tradition and beauty had gotten them: homicidally complacent about the sanctity of life. 

 

Thus was Europe re-born in the image of a concrete God — hulking, angular, and utterly dispossessed of mirth. Public institutions in particular became expressions of civic self-hatred, soulless arenas in which cold-war politics were practiced with the dedication of termites, whose grandiose houses were grotesque cannibalizations of those they replaced. 

 

The word brutal comes to us from the brute, the animal valued only for its obedient power, and which came to mean savage, cruel, and unfeeling — just like the architecture whose name it employs. To be brutal is to be a bully who slays you without conscience, just because he can. 

 

Which brings us to this 1971 Brutalist version of the Caesar salad: a glass bowl filled solely with the undressed top half of a lettuce, into which two salad tongs have been plunged, as if to bring the point home — who needs taste, when literal tastelessness will do. Why, this is violence indeed.

Salads For Every Occasion Card #13 Caesar Salad, Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library, 1971

See also: Making A Boob of Yourself

Raggedy Ann Revisited

“Do you remember Denise’s Mom?”

            “Who can forget?”

            “What about that time she invited us all over for a tea party and served us margaritas?”

            “How old were we — six?”

            “That lady was broken. I mean, she tried, but come on — you can’t give kids hard liquor!”

            “So check what I found the other day at a yard sale. A set of Betty Crocker recipe cards from 1971.”

            “My Mom used to have one of those too!”

            “So I’m going through the cards for fun, because these recipes are whack — and look what I found.”

            “Rag Doll Tea Party. Sweet Jesus — that’s what she served us!”

            “I know, right? Because what little kid expects to be served a salad instead of cookies and lemonade?”

            “Ooh — lettuce! Celery! Raisins!”

            “What’s the hair made out of?”

            “Cheese. Is that a boiled egg for the head?”

            “No — it’s a marshmallow. I remember it being egg, though. Oh my God.”

            “Wow.”

            “No — I mean Oh my God, I just figured it out.”

            “What?”

             “The margaritas. She read it wrong. They were supposed to be meringues. They’re called ‘Marguerites.’”

            “How can you get that wrong?”

            “Girlfriend, everything about this is wrong. You need a cocktail to get through it. She was doing us a favor.”

Children’s Parties Card #15 Rag Doll Tea Party, Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library, 1971

See Also: An International Incident, Horrorscope, A SNAFU In The Jungle

Revenge Salad

Now might I do it pat — while he is chatting;

And now I’ll do it. And so he messes up his pants;

And so I am revenged. That would be just:

I, his virtuous wife, do this cheating villain send

To the laundry.

O, this is silliness, not revenge.

He violated his vows grossly, deliberately;

With deceit on his lips, flushed all May;

And he thought I wouldn’t find him out?

But he bought me jewelry, so it seems

He knows he messed up. Am I then revenged,

To embarrass him at this cookout,

When all our friends will think me mad?

No!

Up, platter, and wait for a crueler time:

When he is drunk asleep, or lost in sports,

Or in the adulterous pleasure of her bed;

Gambling, cussing, or about some act

He shouldn’t be doing;

Then trip him, that his ass may land in salad,

And wreck his mood, as dark and black

As our marriage. My mother-in-law arrives:

This dilly-dallying but prolongs my plans.

(Mrs. Hamlet)

Fast Meals Cookbook, Rockville House Publishers, 1972

Also from this book: Why We Can’t Cook

Jellied Salad

The word “congealed” today has a negative connotation when it comes to foodstuffs. We use this word when describing something that has sat out on the table too long and become inedible. A mayonnaise-based salad, for example, will take on an alarming transparent glazed look after several hours. This out to indicate to any casual observer that the salad must not, under any circumstances, be eaten, for it has become toxic.

But this is not what the word “congealed” means.

Congeal dates from the late 14^th century Old French congeler, meaning to freeze or thicken — which in turn comes from the Latin congelare, meaning to freeze together. Com means together; gelare means to freeze.

An ice cream or sorbet, then, is congealed. Ideas can become congealed in your mind if they cease to be fluid.

You never want someone to remark on your intellect as “a shimmering interplay between aspic and mousse,” for example.

 Salads, Time-Life Books, 1979

Also from this book: Eat Your Vegetables, Mind Your Tongue

Eat Your Vegetables!

Conventional wisdom suggests that in order to get a reluctant entity to ingest an object that is inherently good for it, one has to use the ancient art of subterfuge.

Most commonly, this involves hiding or disguising the good thing (be it medicine or carrots and celery) within something far more desirable, which is then eaten. Pills can be crushed and blended into a hamburger, or some carrot blended into a tomato soup: the unsuspecting recalcitrant is none the wiser.

Mothers, in particular, are experts at hiding good foods within bad ones. They’ll try to squeeze in as many vitamins and minerals as possible — the way cereal companies do when they offer sugar-crusted candy corn shapes which have been infused with micro quantities of the ingredients heavily advertized in fun colors at the top of the package.

Occasionally, however, you get a Mom who is either profoundly incompetent at this necessary skill, or who just doesn’t give a fuck, and fails to appreciate the very notion of “cloak-and-dagger” nutrition, and serves a sackful of carrots embedded in a translucent mold of clear jelly.

Under the impression of elegance, she will artlessly suggest that her creation isn’t in fact what it appears to be; she will have you believe that what are clearly carrot discs are some exotic orange fruit whose deliciousness will be a revelation. “Look,” she will say, “would I have taken such trouble to arrange all that flat-leaf Italian parsley around it if it wasn’t worth it?”

She’s the sort of person who will insist you eat the garnish too.

Salads, Time-Life Books, 1979

Also from this book: Mind Your Tongue, Jellied Salad

Adventures in Salad

How can we make this salad look more…exciting? You know, it’s just an ordinary bowl of salad. My wife makes that all the time. I’m pretty fed up with it.

We could light it differently I suppose. Or shoot it from a different angle.

We could place it on this highly reflective shiny table and bury a flashlight in it.

Now you’re talking.

That’s splendid. It looks like a giant spaceship.

Salad’s so much better when it looks scary. Would you eat that?

No way.

Me neither. Well, we’re out of film. Give us a toke on that thing.

There’s not much left.

Great. Just great. 

Low-Cost Main Dishes, Family Circle, 1978

Also from this book: Floundering, What The Dickens?, All Trussed Up And Nowhere To Go

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

Frankfurter Salad

The root of the word “salad” is sal, or salt and dates in this form from the 14^th century, right around the time that the piquant seasoning of the southern Latinate languages had blended with the old native Northern European ones to form a pleasing effect on the tongue. Salads then were vegetables made tastier with brine, salty water.

Salads today encompass a wide variety of foods, with anything that consists of a mix of ingredients combined with a dressing of some sort. Salads no longer have to be green, though the word has become synonymous with leafy greens eaten raw, such as lettuce, spinach, arugula, watercress etc.

Shakespeare has Cleopatra musing to Caesar (that other salad) on her misbegotten youth by saying “…my salad days, / When I was green in judgment, cold in blood…,” thereby introducing us to salad as metaphor, inexperience being, like young shoots (and salad leaves), green.

If you happen to suffer from chlorophobia, a fear of the color green, then a nice leafy salad is probably not for you (chloro being the same root as chlorophyll, the green in leaves). In which case, you may enjoy this Ham and Frankfurter Salad, and its array of pinks enlivened by the color red, which is about as far from a green salad as one can possibly get.

Grand Diplôme Cooking Course, Vol. 13, Danbury Press, 1971

Also from this series: Sweetbreads Niquette, In Your Face!, Your Goose Is Cooked, Vatel’s Haddock Up To Here

Appetite Special

Dear Jackie —

Was it you who told Mother that I wanted her to keep sending me these insulting letters? Thanks a million. I just got one this morning which suggested I was fat, spotty, pale and constipated.

Does she have any idea that winter in New York is ice cold and full of snow? Not exactly the perfect weather for salad. She included this lovely recipe for an appetizer mixing onion and pineapple with tomato and mayonnaise. Blech!

Please don’t encourage her. You know how she is. And what’s with her fixation with salads all of a sudden? Every single recipe she sends me seems to have Ivanhoe dressing on it too — has she become their spokesperson?

Your loving sister,

Maggie X

Salad Leaves, Harriet Meaker Osborne, Ivanhoe Foods Inc., 1930

 Also from this book: Return To Sender

Return To Sender

Dear Jackie —

I hope this letter finds you well and recovered from all the New Year’s parties! Our dear Mother just sent me the most dreary letter. You know how she is with the “advice.” She thinks she’s helping but you just end up feeling insulted. For instance, she’s resolved to get me cooking salads for our health, as if we’re starving here in the city. There are restaurants in New York, Mother. We’re not wasting away. She calls Robert my “great, tall new husband”! What — does she think that if I don’t feed him salad he’ll shrink?

She even wants to school me on vitamins as if I’ve never heard of them before. Doesn’t she know that vitamins always were in food and that they’re not something that magically appear just because you know they’re there? She’s such a provincial. I don’t know how Father puts up with her. Or you. Is she cramming salad down your throat too? What a nightmare.

Oh, and get this — she says all I ever cooked at home was fudge, and that I’m a complete amateur. Well of course I am — she wouldn’t let us cook anything else! And if she’s so concerned about my being able to keep us both alive, why didn’t she take the time to teach me before the wedding? Let me answer that — it’s because she’s a control freak! I’m so happy to be out of it at last.

Apart from all that we are doing splendidly. Robert is trying his very best to start a family (wink wink) and I am loving the shops. I’ve even taken up smoking! You must try it — it’s very glamorous. Perhaps they don’t allow it at your school?

Ugh — I’ve just noticed a recipe she’s sent me for that abysmal Oyster Salad she serves up in a lemon jelly ring. I’d rather slit my wrists. And so would Robert. We’d both be lying here in a vast pool of blood with an uneaten mold on the table. How would Mother like that?

Be a good girl and kiss all the boys for me,

Your loving Sister,

Maggie X

Salad Leaves, Harriet Meaker Osborne, Ivanhoe Foods, Inc., 1930

Also from this book: Appetite Special

The Heart of Pineapple

This is the reason why I affirm that Kurtz was a remarkable man. He had something to say. He said it. He had become affianced to a woman — a dramatic, highly strung woman — who was in possession of the most tragic misunderstanding when it came to fish-and-flavor love affairs. On our long nights sitting in that horrible darkness he told me of a dish she proudly made and served — a pineapple sliced in two and filled with an assortment of shellfish and bacon. She had gone to great lengths to procure the tropical fruit and bid him “eat! eat!” as he sat in stunned silence at the table. She took his speechlessness for wonder, for affirmation that her intuition and instincts were right, that this dish married perfectly flavors only the most civilized of palates could have conjured up, just as she knew in her heart that Kurtz was the man for her, a Godly man, an honorable man, a man not given in the slightest to wretched sadism and degeneracy in the jungle.

As Kurtz recounted this tale, he clutched at his distended stomach with anguish as the night was broken by the cries of an unfortunate being gnawed upon by a crocodile down by the river.

            “Your Intended must love you very much,” I said, concerned only with escaping the conversation. But he was not done. He was in a confessional mood.

            “That was the reason I left Belgium,” he rasped. “The thought of a lifetime of dinners such as that — it’s more than any man could stand. You must see,” he implored, grabbing me by the collar, “the pineapple, it was cleaved in two, and in my mind’s eye — the grotesque pink and glossy flesh of what appeared to be larvae squirmed within.” He shuddered. The effort of recounting this memory seemed to have sapped his strength and sanity. He fell back, quietly sobbing.

When he died, I knew that it was this terrifying memory that besieged him, driving him over the cliff of despair, as we made our way downriver to return him once and for all into the arms of his abandoned Intended. He cried in a whisper at this image, at this vision of Pineapple-Seafood Salad — he cried out twice, a cry that was no more than a breath:

            “The horror! The horror!”

Fish & Seafood Cookbook, Brand Name Publishing Corp., 1985

Also from this book: Creamed Lobster, Hillbilly Sashimi

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...

Depth of Field

Don’t be alarmed! The salad isn’t about to attack, though it seems like it might.

Why is that? You’d probably point to all that lettuce in the background, which seems a trifle unnecessary, narratively speaking. Do we really need to know where the plated salad came from? The ingredients are pretty obvious after all. Clearly, the three-bean salad has been dressed with oil and vinegar from those glassy jugs. Surely it would be enough simply to photograph the plate?

This image is unsettling not because of overdressing on the part of the food stylist (if there was one), but because the photographer doesn’t know how to use a camera.

For a start, the lighting is too harsh; the multi-directional shadows indicate very strong light coming from both the left and right above the table. The glass reflects so much of it that it throws the white balance off, and bleaches out the pale wax beans. All of the colors, in fact, are squashed into a very narrow tonal range; if this was black and white, it would be hard to differentiate anything. Half close your eyes — all you can see is a dark splotch in the middle where the red is.

When we look at things in real life, we can only focus on one thing at a time. The correct ƒ-stop when adjusting a camera lens helps achieve the right depth of field, bringing the object of the photograph into focus, while leaving everything else a blur. The lower the ƒ-stop, he more sharply that object is separated from its background. A high ƒ-stop will bring everything within a visual plane into focus at once, flattening the depth of field. In this photo, the plated lettuce nearest us seems to be the same distance away as the lettuce right at the back. Since they are the same color and texture (with a lot of the same in between), all of it looks like it sits on a vertical, rather than horizontal surface. It is this visual tricky that makes the salad look so aggressive.

Certainly, this photograph was taken with too shallow a depth of field, but that fault has been magnified by the cropping, which leaves no visual free space for our eyes to rest.

The only thing this image ultimately tells us about its subject is volume: there is a lot of three-bean salad. For all we know, the entire tabletop might be covered in it. The farmer might have had to dig deep in his field to grow it all; the photographer should have dug deeper in his.

Quick and Simple Cooking for Two, Wayne Matthews Corporation, 1976

Also from this book: It Was All Yellow, A Feast For The Eyes

Protein Health Salad

And the first place prize for “Biggest Tossed Salad” goes to this lovely lady.

“I’m just so thrilled to win!” she exclaimed. “I’ve been trying for years but always fell short. This time I adjusted my recipe and it worked!”

When asked what the secret to her success was, she told us “Well, I just kept adding lettuce. Whereas before, I’d always thought in terms of what I’d feed my family, this time around I went whole-hog and used three whole heads!”

As to her scrumptious-looking extras, she admits they weren’t planned. “I sort of ran out of time, to be honest,” she said. “So I ended up just throwing the mushrooms in whole."The name of her creation is Protein Health Salad. "It sounded catchy and appetizing to me," she noted.

“My husband calls me the world’s biggest tosser as it is, so it’s nice to finally live up to the name!”

When asked what she plans to do with her prize money, she tells us she wants to invest in more dried flowers and the occasional jelly mould. Well done!

Favorite Recipes for Salads, Lane Publishing Co., 1979

One is Such A Lonely Number

When a  Passenger Pigeon named Martha died at the ripe old age of 29 on September 1^st, 1914 at her home (The Cincinnati Zoo), she was stuffed and put on display at the Smithsonian. Martha was the last of her kind in the whole world.

Martha, dead as a doornail

Her fate may have been sealed when she hatched in 1885. By that time, Passenger Pigeons were being hunted at a rate that made it impossible for them to survive. Passenger Pigeons were a species who could only breed in large communities, so not having many thousands of potential suitors on hand disinclined them from getting in the mood for love, no matter how much concerned ornithologists tried to relax them with a nice bit of dinner and candlelight. It is entirely possible then, that Martha died a virgin.

Martha, alive but lonely

Martha’s story is especially poignant because of the rapidity with which her species became extinct — it only took 20 years. Once numbering in the billions, they could not compete with hunters as more and more people moved West, and their communal nature doomed them further by making them so easy to kill en masse.

Recipe from Marion Harland's popular book
Practical and Exhaustive Manual of Cooking and Housekeeping of 1871
that contributed to the extinction of the Passenger Pigeon

Yes, I can hear you say, but what does all this have to do with that grotesque salad?

Imagine, if you will, that each layer in it represents all of the birds in North America. Look how robust their numbers are! There is no shortage of lettuce, peppers, mushrooms, onions, celery, peas, dressing, cheese and bacon. The lone stuffed olive sitting on top like Sleeping Beauty on her tower of mattresses is stuffed Martha, resplendently and magnificently alone.

Soup, Salad and Sandwich Cookbook, Ideals Publishing Corp., 1981

Also form this book: Frosted Sandwich Loaf, Potty Mouth, Penis Salad

Chicken Mousse in Aspic (A Cult Classic)

The caption to this charming photograph reads:

"An all-season favorite, Chicken Mousse in Aspic features chicken, ham, whipped cream, liver pate, and mustard for a combination that is sure to please."

This comes from a chapter of Family Circle’s Salad Cookbook entitled “Molded Salad Riches” which was written by gullible people who have of their own free will joined a cult whose discipline is maintained by the forced consumption of massive quantities of LSD-spiked Jello. These are people who have lost touch with reality in a profound way. One can imagine their cult caretaker, himself drugged up to the eyeballs on Quaaludes, unlocking the padlock on the Family Circle fridge, seeing the paltry contents, and undergoing a slow-motion revelation about combining them as a perfect expression of a penance fit for testing the fortitude of the new recruits.

How else can this travesty be explained? What sane mind could possible come up with this introduction: 

"Heap up the goodness and fold or cover with gelatin and you have a molded salad. Lend them all the goodness of a full meal and you have a main-dish molded salad. In these pages you’ll chance upon many main-dish and side-dish molded salads."

It is not so much a culinary suggestion as it is a religious tract meant to invoke both awe and fear in those who recite it in hushed monotone in the “Family Circle” kitchens. Family Circle, my ass. The non-brainwashed mind sees the invitation to “chance upon” many molded salads as a threat, something to be ardently avoided and possibly reported to the authorities, not a promise for further means of devotion.

There is also a troubling amount of detailed instruction in this recipe, especially concerning the production of foil cones. This is a dead giveaway: once the acolytes are proficient at rolling foil cones, it’s just a teensy step away from the hillbilly crack pipe. Mark my words. 

Read the recipe at your own risk.

 Salad Cookbook, The Family Circle, Inc., 1972

Check out the militant-looking Family Circle logo in the corner (Dharma Initiative, anyone?).

Also from this book: What We Talk About When We Talk About Gelatin, Chicken Indienne, Salmon In A Sauna