Not So Comforting Foods
Last week I received an exciting phone call, a request for a funeral salad. I tried to keep the excitement out of my voice when I called Hope back,
"Yes, I'll be happy to bring something."
Though my carelessly chosen words suggest otherwise, I am, of course, filled with sympathy for the family of the departed. Therefore I refrained from doing a happy dance when I hung up the phone.
This eagerness suggests to me that I've reached a level of old church lady that most other women do not achieve (as though it is a level of merit and not the by-product of having little else going on in my life) until they are well into their seventies, at which point they have fewer career commitments so as to have time to host funeral luncheons but are not so old that the majority of funerals are for their close friends.
Wherever my position on the old church lady spectrum, I really am glad to make a salad, in large part because a good funeral luncheon is an integral part of the healing process. As far as I can tell, the process of recovery and healing consists of grieving, remembering, celebrating, crying, laughing, more crying, more remembering, and eating. Maybe sacred is a stretch to describe the task of salad construction, but preparing food to contribute to that healing process does feel like very special work. Beyond all that, I also like to make funeral salads because of the interesting challenges they present.
Salads are curious dishes. For, really, what constitutes a salad? Ordinarily, I think a salad should be spring greens and a vinaigrette. You can add other things--crunchy things, tart things, chewy things, sweet things-- but if you don't start with a spring green mix, as my husband so eloquently put it, "what's the point?" I have a vague idea that salads should be healthy, uncooked or cold, and probably serve as a good source of fiber. Beyond those criteria, I really don't know. My recollection of salads in Northern Illinois is that they are predominately white. Ice burg lettuce, sometimes with cucumbers, smothered in ranch dressing - white. What's the point in that? I'd rather eat an apple and be done with it.
So the first time I was asked to bring a salad to church for the supper that followed the Sunday School Christmas program in 2011, I responded "Great, I just bought a new package of spring greens."
"Oh," the director of the Christmas program stopped me, "or you could make a salad with Jell-o and marshmallows."
Now, I do love raspberry cream Jello with chunks of frozen raspberries and Cool Whip topping and I do love strawberry Jello with slices of bananas, but let's be serious. Jello is no more a salad than it is a dessert. Who was I to say though? This was long ago, before I became an old lady. So I researched Jello salads, went to the store for Jello and marshmallows, boiled water with love in my heart, and then added my dish, which with the addition of cream cheese, pretzels, and whipped topping no longer carried any pretension at all of being healthy, to the line up of fluorescent, wiggling "salads." Despite the fact that the identity of this dish was a farce, it was delicious and I was applauded for my creative use of pretzels.
The second time I was asked to make salad, this time for a funeral, I went off-script with the cranberry almond wild rice dish that I found on the Taste of Home website. I wasn't sure how it would be received, what with the lack of candy in it, but since the recipe had a couple of strong reviews from a demographic that I do expect shares my appreciation for funeral luncheons, (that is to say I assume all Taste of home readers and contributors are from the Dakotas), and it required no shopping as all the ingredients were in my cupboard, I went ahead and made it. Just as Waterlily said, people LOVED it. The funeral luncheon was all abuzz with excitement for, as I alternately overheard from several tables, "the ethnic rice dish" and "the Middle Eastern salad with cranberries" (and I didn't even add feta, as was the suggestion of bethand3girls).
So successful was my foray into unconventional salad construction that when the most recent funeral salad opportunity availed itself, I took inventory of my cupboards and made a salad with those ingredients.
Based loosely on this recipe, my cranberry-apple-quinoa-walnut salad was very good. I ate it for breakfast and lunch the day of the funeral and enjoyed it for at least one meal every day in the week that followed. It is customary for any food remaining after the luncheon to be sent home with the family in mourning, so it is actually unprecedented that I should have any leftovers to eat. Evidently, I should have known the assemblage better. While the hot dish was a highly coveted take home delicacy, families who have the widowed matriarch lead the funeral procession on her John Deere tractor, pulling a wagon that carries the body of her late husband, have little need for ancient grains.
I should have known better. Comfort food will not likely be found on websites that proclaim every dish to be a "delicious achievement"and where self described foodies leave reviews. Perhaps I shouldn't have made so much, but what can I say? One and a half cups of uncooked quinoa produces a deceivingly large amount of quinoa and, upon further consideration, no amount of quinoa can truly say "sorry for your loss." At this point, the case for the marshmallows becomes abundantly clear. I think I will start keeping Jello on hand.
"Yes, I'll be happy to bring something."
Though my carelessly chosen words suggest otherwise, I am, of course, filled with sympathy for the family of the departed. Therefore I refrained from doing a happy dance when I hung up the phone.
This eagerness suggests to me that I've reached a level of old church lady that most other women do not achieve (as though it is a level of merit and not the by-product of having little else going on in my life) until they are well into their seventies, at which point they have fewer career commitments so as to have time to host funeral luncheons but are not so old that the majority of funerals are for their close friends.
Wherever my position on the old church lady spectrum, I really am glad to make a salad, in large part because a good funeral luncheon is an integral part of the healing process. As far as I can tell, the process of recovery and healing consists of grieving, remembering, celebrating, crying, laughing, more crying, more remembering, and eating. Maybe sacred is a stretch to describe the task of salad construction, but preparing food to contribute to that healing process does feel like very special work. Beyond all that, I also like to make funeral salads because of the interesting challenges they present.
Salads are curious dishes. For, really, what constitutes a salad? Ordinarily, I think a salad should be spring greens and a vinaigrette. You can add other things--crunchy things, tart things, chewy things, sweet things-- but if you don't start with a spring green mix, as my husband so eloquently put it, "what's the point?" I have a vague idea that salads should be healthy, uncooked or cold, and probably serve as a good source of fiber. Beyond those criteria, I really don't know. My recollection of salads in Northern Illinois is that they are predominately white. Ice burg lettuce, sometimes with cucumbers, smothered in ranch dressing - white. What's the point in that? I'd rather eat an apple and be done with it.
So the first time I was asked to bring a salad to church for the supper that followed the Sunday School Christmas program in 2011, I responded "Great, I just bought a new package of spring greens."
"Oh," the director of the Christmas program stopped me, "or you could make a salad with Jell-o and marshmallows."
Now, I do love raspberry cream Jello with chunks of frozen raspberries and Cool Whip topping and I do love strawberry Jello with slices of bananas, but let's be serious. Jello is no more a salad than it is a dessert. Who was I to say though? This was long ago, before I became an old lady. So I researched Jello salads, went to the store for Jello and marshmallows, boiled water with love in my heart, and then added my dish, which with the addition of cream cheese, pretzels, and whipped topping no longer carried any pretension at all of being healthy, to the line up of fluorescent, wiggling "salads." Despite the fact that the identity of this dish was a farce, it was delicious and I was applauded for my creative use of pretzels.
The second time I was asked to make salad, this time for a funeral, I went off-script with the cranberry almond wild rice dish that I found on the Taste of Home website. I wasn't sure how it would be received, what with the lack of candy in it, but since the recipe had a couple of strong reviews from a demographic that I do expect shares my appreciation for funeral luncheons, (that is to say I assume all Taste of home readers and contributors are from the Dakotas), and it required no shopping as all the ingredients were in my cupboard, I went ahead and made it. Just as Waterlily said, people LOVED it. The funeral luncheon was all abuzz with excitement for, as I alternately overheard from several tables, "the ethnic rice dish" and "the Middle Eastern salad with cranberries" (and I didn't even add feta, as was the suggestion of bethand3girls).
So successful was my foray into unconventional salad construction that when the most recent funeral salad opportunity availed itself, I took inventory of my cupboards and made a salad with those ingredients.
Based loosely on this recipe, my cranberry-apple-quinoa-walnut salad was very good. I ate it for breakfast and lunch the day of the funeral and enjoyed it for at least one meal every day in the week that followed. It is customary for any food remaining after the luncheon to be sent home with the family in mourning, so it is actually unprecedented that I should have any leftovers to eat. Evidently, I should have known the assemblage better. While the hot dish was a highly coveted take home delicacy, families who have the widowed matriarch lead the funeral procession on her John Deere tractor, pulling a wagon that carries the body of her late husband, have little need for ancient grains.
I should have known better. Comfort food will not likely be found on websites that proclaim every dish to be a "delicious achievement"and where self described foodies leave reviews. Perhaps I shouldn't have made so much, but what can I say? One and a half cups of uncooked quinoa produces a deceivingly large amount of quinoa and, upon further consideration, no amount of quinoa can truly say "sorry for your loss." At this point, the case for the marshmallows becomes abundantly clear. I think I will start keeping Jello on hand.
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| The really tasty leftovers from a not so well received funeral salad. Maybe Josh is right, it does look a little bit like something someone sneezed while in the middle of chewing. |
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