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Before Wednesday night (hopefully by tomorrow night) I’ll post the image for the most recently available prints of one of Mother’s (Marion Gunderson) watercolors.
Strawberry Pretzel Salad. These Target-brand sliced strawberries are thicker/humpier than the more thinly sliced berries that I usually use.* (Click photo to enlarge.)
Saturday night Bill and I had good friends over for an informal dinner party. Our menu consisted of lettuce salad with bacon crumbles and balsamic vinaigrette dressing, lasagna (Rolfe’s Paula Pedersen’s recipe), sourdough bread (from Target), strawberry pretzel salad (Phyllis Poppen’s recipe), and Flarah’s mini-cheesecakes (purchased at Gateway Market, West Glen, West Des Moines). I was a little concerned about having two rectangular-and-also-red main menu items (lasagna and strawberry pretzel salad). However, my family-sounding-board said to go for it, so I did.
Since Saturday night, one of the guests requested the salad recipe. So, here is the pretzel salad recipe. This salad is almost like a dessert. But…shhhhhhhhh! If we don’t call it a dessert, in addition to this salad during the main course, we get to have dessert after the main course, as well!
* * * * *
* Even though the recipe says that my Jell-O mixture never gets partially set before I put it in the fridge, that is not true in this case. When I made the salad in the photograph, I accidentally left the Jell-O in the saucepan for about an hour before pouring it into the 9″x13″ pan. By that time, the Jell-O had definitely set making it look sort of humpy in this photo.
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Marion Gunderson Art (and the Farmer's Daughter) 
February 1, 2010 at 8:12 pm |
Yummmm, I want some!
February 2, 2010 at 12:57 pm |
So . . . did you cut it in squares *before* serving it on the salad plates? Or did people cut their own from the serving dish?
LOVELY on your good china! Is that the Haviland from one of the great aunts?
For many, many years, we four Moores have had the salad for Christmas dinner, along with ribs, potato casserole, and . . . some green vegetable. The salad is definitely a winner!
Kudos to you, Louise, on your successful hosting! 🙂
February 2, 2010 at 4:31 pm |
Peg: I cut the salad into little squares so that people wouldn’t need to feel compelled to taking big servings. But, there were several “seconds” takers, which was fun.
During the summer of 2002 I showed to Mother photos of several heirlooms I had at our house at the time. I asked her what she knew of each of the items and took notes. One of those photos was of the Haviland china that is in this post’s salad photo and that you asked about. In my notes, I have that Mother indicated that it was Grandma’s china, and that “Mother doesn’t know anything about” the china (i.e., any details about where/when/etc. Grandma got the china). Clara once said she thought the china wasn’t Grandma’s, which could very well be the case. However, since Mother said it was Grandma’s china, and since I’ve gone with that line of thought for several years, and since I really, really have liked knowing that it was Grandma’s china (according to Mother, anyway), I’m sort of going at it with blinders that even if someone believes it belonged to someone else, I really don’t want to know about it unless there is concrete evidence that it didn’t belong to Grandma.
February 2, 2010 at 9:03 pm |
Yum! Yum! Did you use a reflector disk for this photo? Well, at least you didn’t have Frank trying to taste or run off with the salad.
February 2, 2010 at 10:05 pm |
Frank? You mean the dog in the reflector video? Hahaha! GOOD ONE, Clara! 🙂
And you know . . . I think it *is* Grandma’s china!!! 🙂
February 3, 2010 at 11:42 pm |
Actually, I did not use a reflector disk with the salad photo. But, your asking me made me look at the salad photo again and think more about the lighting.
That Frank! Your comment is hilarious, Clara. I’m visualizing Frank running off with the salad. Frank just can’t sit still, can he?!
If anybody is reading this and doesn’t know who Frank is, the absurd (but sort of educational) 4:50-minute video of Frank is video #3 in this post: https://mariongundersonart.com/2010/01/10/4768/ .