Category: Vegetables

Katie’s Carrot Salad

“In Adam’s Fall,
we sinned all.”

This is how children were introduced to the alphabet in The New England Primer, the first and most famous textbook published in the American colonies. The rhyming verses and woodcut images taught children their letters and gave them a moral lesson.

The Primer included The Shorter Catechism, the Lord’s Prayer and the Apostles Creed as well as hymns and verses used to teach children to read and learn how to become good Christian adults. Though I didn’t know that it was one of the verses from The New England Primer, I can still recite this famous prayer that we recited long ago in Sunday School and before we went to bed.

“Now I lay me down to take my sleep, 
I pray the Lord my soul to keep, 
If I should die before I wake, 
I pray the Lord my soul to take.”

But despite the guidance of our parents and teachers, we all slip sometimes and even a pastor can mislead a member of his congregation. Thus it was that Jerri came came home from a church potluck praising Pastor Jim’s carrot salad. She made it several times over the next eight or ten years until she was distracted by some other recipes.

A few weeks ago, she asked me if I had put a carrot salad on Courage in the Kitchen. Since I had not, she suggested that I do Jim’s Carrot Salad. When I asked for the recipe, she confessed that she was no longer certain about all the ingredients. An email to Jim and his wife produced the recipe and the truth.

It is Katie’s, not Jim’s salad. I’m sure Jim did not intentionally lead Jerri to believe that it was his salad, but it is very tempting to claim ownership of a recipe that good cooks are swooning over. We must always remember that even pastors are human.

Here is Katie’s introduction to the salad:

“The recipe is really my mother’s but she taught me to throw in what tastes good to me. Her version didn’t include coconut but Jim loves coconut….My carrot salad is sort of a throw anything you want in.  I put in grated carrots, coconut, raisins, apple, and mayo thinned slightly with pineapple juice. It’s mostly carrots, but I do like to put a little chopped raw apple in also.  Sunflower seeds may be Jerri’s version and that sounds good, too.  I do like salads and usually guess at what I would like to eat most in the salad.”

Here is some guidance to help you create a delicious carrot salad. I call it Katie’s, but she credits her mother with teaching her to make it, Jim inspired her to add the coconut and Jerri apparently contributed the sunflower seeds. This is a very forgiving recipe (pun intended) that you can customize to fit your tastes.

INGREDIENTS:

3 cups grated carrots
1/4 cup chopped apple
1/4 cup grated or flaked coconut
1/4 cup raisins
1/4 cup sunflower seeds
1/4 cup mayonnaise or salad dressing
2 – 3 T pineapple juice

PROCEDURE:

Wash and scrape or peel four or five large carrots. Grate them into a large mixing bowl. You want about three cups of grated carrots. Add a quarter cup of crisp apple chopped into a quarter-inch dice along with the coconut, raisins and sunflower seeds. Mix everything together.

Blend two or three tablespoons of pineapple juice with a quarter cup of mayonnaise or salad dressing and stir the dressing into the other ingredients. If the salad is too dry, add more mayonnaise and pineapple juice. If it tastes bland, try adding a teaspoon of lemon juice. If it is not sweet enough, use a little more pineapple juice or add a tiny bit of sugar or honey.

NOTES: Obviously, you should feel free to omit or add an ingredient or to increase the amount of one you like. My advice always is to be cautious when changing a recipe. You may really like sunflower seeds, for instance, but a cupful might have an effect you didn’t intend.

Almost Fat-free Calabacitas

Our niece Susie brought one of her favorite cookbooks to a family gathering in Kansas earlier this summer. When she handed me Jane Marsh Dieckmann’s Use it All: The Leftovers Cook Book, I grabbed it like a hungry trout after a tasty mayfly. The first two sentences of the introduction set the hook:

“How often have you opened your refrigerator and looked at some small amount of leftover roast, or cottage cheese, or dairy sour cream, or boiled potatoes? How often have you wished you could use it up simply, economically, and tastefully?”

We try to use every leftover that remains after a meal. We package them, put them in the refrigerator or freezer and do our best to remember where they are. One time, when he was about ten years old, our son made a “freezer map” which helped for a while, but today we just rummage through the packages looking for inspiration.

If something gets lost, we think of Jerri’s grandmother, a frugal Mennonite housewife, who explained as she was putting a few tablespoons of gravy in a dish to go in the ice box, “I don’t like to waste anything, but if I forget about it and it spoils, I don’t feel so bad throwing it away.”

Our sentiments exactly.

But it really is better to use those leftovers whenever you can. The calabacitas recipe below calls for cooked corn. Most of us probably have had the experience of cooking a dozen ears of corn and having three or four left over. Jane Dieckmann’s recipe calls for three ears of cooked corn. I used uncooked ears, and the calabacitas was delicious. I am sure that it would be just as tasty made with the leftover corn.

Calabacitas is another one of the great dishes invented by native Americans. It is a traditional dish of the Pueblo people of the American Southwest and also very popular in Mexico. If you made the mistake of planting more than one hill of zucchini, it may become a popular dish on your table as well.

Calabacita is the Spanish word for zucchini and calabacitas refers to a dish of stewed or sautéd corn and zucchini. There are scores of variations on the basic recipe. Some add sweet bell peppers, others, hot chile peppers; some omit the onion entirely, others add scallions. Most use a little oil, but some do not. Cheese is optional or required, depending on the cook.

I was a little skeptical about this recipe, since it uses no oil. Instead, you simmer the vegetables in a small amount of water. The cheese provides just enough oil to enhance the flavor of the vegetables, so you end up with a side dish that is very low in fat but high in flavor.

INGREDIENTS:

3 ears of sweet corn
1 medium onion (about 2 1/2 inches in diameter)
1 large clove garlic
2 – 3 T water
1 medium zucchini (about 2 inches in diameter)
2 medium tomatoes (2 1/2 to 3 inches in diameter)
1/2 cup grated Cheddar or Monterey Jack cheese
1/4 tsp. salt
1/8 tsp. freshly ground black pepper

PROCEDURE:

Cut the corn off the cob and remove the dry outer husks, stem and root ends from the onion and garlic. Slice the onion thinly and mince the garlic. Put the corn kernels, onion and garlic into a saucepan along with two or three tablespoons of water. Cover the pan and bring it to a simmer over medium to low heat. Cook for about five minutes.

Wash and cut the stem and blossom ends from the zucchini. Cut the squash in half lengthwise, then cut quarter-inch-thick slices Add the zucchini to the saucepan and cook for another eight minutes.

Wash and chop the tomatoes into a fine dice and grate the cheese. After the squash and onion mixture has cooked about eight minutes, stir in the salt, pepper and tomatoes and cook another two or three minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and fold in the cheese. Taste the calabacitas and adjust the seasoning with a little salt if necessary.

NOTES: You can use either fresh or cooked sweet corn. Since “medium” means something different to each of us when we are discussing vegetable sizes, chop vegetables until you have generous cups of corn and onion and a cup and a half each of zucchini and tomatoes. This will produce enough calabacitas to serve four to six adults or two adults and one hungry vegetarian grandson.

Jane Dieckmann advised against adding salt and pepper, but our grandson agreed with Jerri and me that it needed a little. You can omit it from the recipe, and diners can add as much as they wish at the table.