a recipe for 2012

It is hard to imagine eating some of the “Betty Crocker” type meals I ate as a kid. Creations like casseroles made out of canned soup, jello salads, and shake and bake chicken were common meals, but I would never think of making them today. I own a copy of the Better Homes and Gardens New Cookbook (circa 1963) with the red and white check cover. I love looking at some of the photos of the tablesettings and picnics from the 60’s…wow! How things have changed! Just as interesting as the food and tablesetting decor, are the outfits people wore to backyard events…according to the photos, dresses and pearls were the dress code for women attending picnics in the 1960’s!

Picture of cold cous cous salad for 2012.

When I was young, my mom would bring potato or macaroni salad to the picnics we attended. Or, a jello salad made in a Tupperware mold. I have never brought any of these salads to a picnic. When I first started bringing food items to picnics, potato salad was updated with a cold wild rice salad, macaroni salad became tortellini salad, and jello salad became fruit salad – maybe with an added yogurt dressing.

The dressing is made with fresh lemon juice, garlic, and extra virgin olive oil.

As the decades changed, so did my cookbooks….I went from the old Better Homes and Gardens to Julia Child to Martha Stewart to Bobby Flay. Today, cooking trends happen so much faster and there are networks full of cooking shows instead of the one or two that were shown in my mother’s time. Cookbooks are no longer a necessity since countless recipes are so easily accessible by way of the internet. Instead of a cookbook, I am usually carrying my iPad around the kitchen to look up new recipes or to research other cooking information.

A more recent salad update happened after attending a friend’s party…she was

serving a tortellini salad made from a recipe I had shared with her years earlier… it seemed so out of date…I realized the tortellini salad had seen its day. Do you need a salad intervention? If you are still making the same old salad, why not try something new? Here’s one of my current favorites…

Move over tortellini…

Cold Cous Cous Salad

Cook 2 cups cous cous as directed and rinse with cold water.

Add to cous cous:

• 1 cup corn (I use frozen…no need to thaw)
• 1 cup peas (same here)
• 1 1/3 cup craisins
• 1 cup chopped dried apricots
• 2 cups chopped fresh spinach (I make the salad ahead and add this when ready to use so it won’t become too wilted)
• 5 scallions, chopped
• 1 cup shredded carrots

Dressing:

• ½ cup extra virgin olive oil
• 2/3 cup fresh lemon juice
• 2 cloves minced garlic

Mix all ingredients and keep cold.