It’s been awhile since my last update on Have Dog, Will Drive! Soon, I will share more about the rollercoaster of a summer that Grace and I have had. You can also tune into our podcast, which is the best place to get updates these days. But I still really love blogging and plan to always keep this space alive :)
The reason I’m popping in now is to share a post that accompanies our latest podcast episode, all about making old-school, midwestern-style, church potluck-esque salads.
“Salad” is actually not the operative word here.
This whole idea started a couple of months ago when Grace posed a question to Instagram: What is the weirdest salad you’ve ever had? People wrote in with all kinds of crazy things, like Snickers salad, hot cheeto salad, strawberry pretzel cream cheese salad, “frog eye” salad, and more. Then it became a running joke on the podcast. Grace wanted to do a “salad episode” where we talked about the weirdest salads we could find, and did some taste testing. Honestly, I thought it was too weird and people would think we’d really lost the plot. But I was slowly proven wrong…
I got SO many messages about fond church potluck salad memories. Probably more than any other topic we’d floated, our listeners wrote in via email, DM, etc., to say they wanted a salad episode!
Right around the time we started thinking it might actually be time to do this, we noticed that we hit 100,000 downloads on Under Our Roof. YAY! It’s such an honor to know that people tune in each week, and I get a little bit emotional when I think about the fact that we’ve actually gathered a little community through this fun project. We’ve even met some of our listeners in person! And I’d LOVE to do more of that.
Anyway, the 100,000 download mark seemed like the perfect time to do a salad episode to celebrate. So as of the time this blog post goes live, you can hear all about our experimental “cooking” day!
Because we wanted to offer some kind of visual component for this one, I decided to dust off the blog and share some of the photos. The best way to fully experience The Salad Episode is to listen to the podcast and then also check out these pics. I’m also sharing the recipes (and a couple of extras below) in case you want to try to recreate this! I really hope you enjoy this weird podcast/blog digression :)
Orange Fluff Salad
Recipe (sent in by a podcast listener—thanks, Lauren!):
ORANGE FLUFF SALAD
8 oz frozen whipped topping, thawed
3 oz package orange gelatin mix, just the powder
16 oz of 4% fat cottage cheese, small or large curd will work
14 oz can mandarin oranges, drained
1 cup mini marshmallows
Combine the thawed whipped topping and orange gelatin powder together in a large bowl and stir until combined.
Add in the cottage cheese, mandarin oranges and mini marshmallows and gently fold in until mixture is combined.
Enjoy right away or chill covered in the fridge until ready to serve.
The orange fluff salad was probably the weirdest thing we made. Not my personal favorite (you can hear more about it on the podcast), but apparently very authentically church potlucky. I grew up in a church where such things were not on the menu, haha.
Grace loved it!
Next up…
Pea ‘n’ Peanut Salad
Linking the recipe here—from Taste of Home.
We knew we wanted to do one fully savory/salty salad, and peas seem to be ubiquitous in a lot of these kinds of recipes. This one has just a few ingredients: peas, roasted peanuts, red onion, celery, bacon, and a dressing made from Italian dressing + mayo.
This one was great!! The only thing I would have changed is making my own homemade Italian-style dressing, but I wanted to be true to the recipe making it for this challenge. The finely chopped red onion and celery add crunch (along with the bacon + peanuts). It was overall just a great side dish I thought.
Then for a super dessert-y salad, we made…
Snickers Salad, a.k.a Candy Bar Apple Salad
The recipe for this one is linked here, also from Taste of Home.
This might have been the salad that sounded the weirdest to me when I was first rounding up some recipes. But it ended up being really delicious!
The ingredients are all things I would normally eat on their own—Snickers, apples, cool whip, vanilla pudding. Mixed all together and set in the fridge for a couple of hours, and it was actually a delicious crunchy sweet velvety treat. Still weird, but good!
We spent such a fun morning creating these concoctions, tasting them, and recording the podcast episode.
I’m going to leave you with a couple of extras. First, Lauren, our listener who sent in the Orange Fluff recipe, also sent the following recipes:
LUTHERAN SALAD
2 sm. pkgs. lime Jello
2 c. hot water
1/2 pkg. miniature marshmallows
1 c. crushed pineapple, drained
1 c. cottage cheese
1 c. Cool whip
1 c. walnuts, cut fine
Dissolve the Jello in hot water. When Jello begins to set, add the remaining ingredients. Decorate the top with maraschino cherries if feeling wicked. Place in refrigerator until ready to use.
(I've also seen this done with shredded coconut mixed in. Go crazy!)
---
STRAWBERRY PRETZEL SALAD
2 c. crushed pretzel sticks, coarse
3/4 c. melted margarine
1/3 c. sugar
1 8-oz. pkg. cream cheese
1 c. sugar
1 9-oz pkg Cool Whip, thawed
1 lg. box Strawberry Jello
2 c. boiling water
2 10-oz. pkgs sliced sweetened strawberries, thawed
Preparation
Combine pretzels, margarine and 1/3 cup sugar and press into bottom of 9 X 13-inch baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 15 minutes. Cool. Combine softened cream cheese and 1 cup sugar. Mix until well blended. Fold in whipped topping. Spread on top of pretzels and chill. Dissolve gelatin in boiling water; add strawberries. Chill until partially set. Pour over cream cheese layer. Chill until firm.
Lastly, a link to my all-time favorite Martha Stewart coleslaw recipe. We reference it in the podcast episode, so I wanted to include it here. I can’t take credit for it, but I have made it dozens of times for Grace and it’s a staple for summer celebrations. I’m not a “coleslaw person”—wouldn’t normally order it at a restaurant or anything. But I CRAVE this coleslaw. Don’t skip out on the grated onion, trust me. If you can, chop all the veggies yourself—I’m convinced that pre-shredded, dried-out cabbage and carrots is the culprit behind a lot of mediocre coleslaw.
Happy salad making!