Marion Gunderson Art (and the Farmer's Daughter)

(Click here to go to this blog’s home page.)

On Sunday I watched about half of the Super Bowl commercials. I know this is a delayed comment, but my favorite commercial was the Snickers commercial with Betty White.

One of our pre-game appetizers was carrots, celery, and tortilla chips served with Frank’s Redhot Buffalo Chicken Dip. Mmmm, mmmm, good.  I’m not much of a one for really spicy food.  This dip had just the right amount of kick to keep it interesting, but not so much that it couldn’t be tamed with a swig of ice water of beer.

Instead of Frank’s Redhot sauce, “our” dip was made with Louisiana’s sauce, and without the crumbled blue cheese. I think the crumbled blue cheese would make it even better. But, even without the blue cheese, the dip was addicting. (Just one more bite. Ok, now, really, just one more “one-more” bite….)

My plan is to, by Friday evening, publish a fluff (but I think fun) post. After that, it might not be until the end of next week before I post again. When I do, I plan to post comments from two people who witnessed the Pocahontas, Iowa, grain elevator being constructed in the late 1940s. That grain elevator was painted twice by Mother (Marion Gunderson) in 1949. (Information about prints of each of her Pocahontas grain elevator watercolors is available on this blog at “View and Order Prints.”)

(Click here to go to Louise Shimon’s blog’s home page.)

(Click here to go to this blog’s home page.)

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.

(Click here to go to Louise Shimon’s blog’s home page.)