Salads and Things

I've thought of little else since posting this extremely thought provoking discourse on salads.

Preoccupied with classifications?

Yes.
Some might consider me the culinary Carl Linnaeus and, in a way, that is true.  I do like plants and I have been thinking about how to group things.  But in another, more accurate way, the Father of Taxonomy and I are not at all alike.  

No matter.

My determination to prepare the appropriate dish, for funerals or 4th of July picnics, has consumed an inordinate number of my waking and what should have been my non-waking hours.  Many a night have I laid in bed considering the palatability of menus and if you think this borders the line between ludicrous and ridiculous, well of course you're right.  

(But I have been very clear about this: not a lot going on in my life, love for food, a veneer of easygoing, casual self possession thinly covering an intensely compulsive hazelnut creme filling...)  

Andrew Warhol "Cuts of Lamb"
from Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cookbook p. 365

My mom has a first edition of Amy Vanderbilt's Complete Cookbook illustrated by Andy Warhol. The book features recipes for baked omelets with avocado sauce, instructions for how to properly care for cheese (personal knowledge that I actually attribute to Dorothy Austin, who told me "you should treat your cheese as you treat your pets.  Would you put your dog in plastic?  Never, you would keep it in glass!"), pop illustrations of lamb cutlets, and complete menu ideas for all imaginable occasions.  Growing up, I loved reading them because I found both the breadth of the events and the specificity of the prescribed menus subtly hilarious and expressly enlightening.

Need to know what to serve clergy and family for dinner when the bride and groom have left and there has been no reception?  
Amy Vanderbilt had an answer for that - mixed vegetable juice cocktails with assorted canapés, fried oysters, hot corn pudding, tossed green salad, cheese biscuits, plum turnovers, and coffee.

Tree Trimming Supper?
Tomato juice refresher, sardine cheese spread, assorted crackers, garlic shrimp casserole, coleslaw, hot muffins, coconut chocolate cake, and coffee

Fourth of July Luncheon on Porch?

Chilled tomato bouillon, small water-cress sandwiches, chafing-dish  á la king, toast, watermelon, lemonade, coffee

So you see, there is nothing new about this salad preoccupation, (aside from the actual recording of thoughts), it stems from a lifetime of cookbook analyses.  Unfortunately, my scholarly pursuit of systematic salad composition and classification has only unearthed more questions.  To maintain culinary integrity here, I present a most orderly approach to my findings and question.:

Item I: Chicken Salad

A bunch of chopped chicken, mixed with mayonnaise and assorted fruits and nuts, including, but not limited to a grapes, raisins, walnuts, pecans, apples, dried cranberries, almonds

Problem: Name implies "salad" but no spring greens, no marshmallows.  This troubling duplicity extends to ham and tuna salads as well.

I am loathe to concede defeat but it begins to seem that consistency is impossible when it comes to salads.  In fact, I'm beginning to think that salads are nothing more than a bunch of stuff in a bowl.  

Item II: Trail Mix

A bunch of stuff in a bowl including, but not limited to, raisins, dried cranberries, almonds, walnuts, pretzels, marshmallows, chocolate chips, M&Ms, pecans, peanuts, sesame sticks, macadamia nuts, sunflower seeds, dried apricots, peanut butter cups, cereal pieces

Problem: A salad is a bunch of stuff in a bowl.  The change is that you eat trail mix with your fingers.  

Item III:Breakfast Cereal

A bunch of stuff in a bowl - including, but not limited to, raisins, dried cranberries, almonds, walnuts, pretzels, marshmallows, chocolate chips, M&Ms, pecans, peanuts, macadamia nuts, sunflower seeds, dried apricots, cereal pieces - prepared by flooding with milk

Problem: What is what is what!?

It would seem that the only differentiation to be made between these three, and indeed between everything else that is really just stuff in a bowl, is the occasion for which they are prepared and the utensils with which you eat them. 

That's probably true of mankind, right?  We're all made of the same stuff, some of us are just better in the morning, or at funerals, or at going on long trips in the car.

At any rate, I'm sure that Amy Vanderbilt would have been both impressed and appalled by my special occasion menus: 

Walking in the woods:  Chocolate Peanut Salad

Feel better after a funeral: Fluorescent Marshmallow Salad

Annoy everyone you know: Pretentious Quinoa  with Gouda and Arugula Salad

Cause irreparable damage to your children in the morning: Warm Oatmeal and Raisin Salad

Hopefully someday I will inspire some little girl with my cookbook...