The Party Goes On and On and On and On
Mom's Wooden SpoonDecember 05, 2022x
7
00:29:4224.21 MB

The Party Goes On and On and On and On

The Salad

For the recipe found on Mary's Memo, click here.

24 Hour Party Salad Transcript

I am really looking forward to today's recipe oh absolutely I have so many memories of Mom making this and taking it to so many of our childhood events yeah and the fun thing about it was it's pretty easy to make so she would allow us to start helping her with the recipe and then eventually she let us start making it ourselves and as a kid what's better than being totally in charge of an entire item to take to a potluck or something like that fantastic and dad would even eat it because it had one of his favorite ingredients Miracle Whip delicious so I can't wait to see if it tastes like I remember oh me either let's go welcome to mom's wooden spoon get your apron on and your fanny flicker ready as we cook up some nostalgia oh yummy

hi this is Carrie and this is Kristen and today we are going to make Ann Trentadue's 24 hour party salad from Mary's special edition party food ideas for Christmas 1974. oh my gosh it is so fancy that it has recipes on both sides of the page and no picture of Mary no mention of Chiefly Foods not at all it is just one fabulous recipe idea after another to make your Christmas party of 1974 the best yet our version is ripped to shreds it obviously was one that our mother used frequently I mean we can attest because the 24-hour party salad was a party staple our mother actually tried to pass it off as her own in the 1987 church cookbook oh busted we looked before and she's changed just a little bit she didn't put in as much Miracle Whip because apparently I don't know that would make you fat you never know I am not sure so speaking of Miracle Whip let's talk about uh what's in this delicious 24-hour party salad I have cauliflower and I have the head of iceberg lettuce we don't want to be too fancy there no romaine in this bad boy nope nope and let's see one medium onion all right yeah and then we have some parmesan cheese bacon Italian salad dressing that you mix with the Miracle Whip and basically that's it that is it yep now do you have bacon which the recipe calls for or what our mother preferred to use in the 70s the Bac-o the Bac-os we actually have real bacon my wonderful husband got up early this morning and made the bacon for us but our mother didn't even like to put in that much effort sorry Mom if you're listening and why would you when you have the Bac-o absolutely now the Bac-o was not real bacon no no and actually we have a little jar of it here I don't think we could find actual bacons but we have something called Mccormick Bac'n pieces oh fantastic now let me read you the ingredients because this is pretty gross ready textured soy flour and yeast extract and lots and lots of red food coloring wow so it's just red crunchy soy bits yep can we try one let's do it I absolutely want to see I I'm envisioning just salty crunchy yeah full stop uh salty crunchy full stop yes well you know what my friend when we were little she had a camper that would sit in her driveway um over the summers and you know they'd attach it to their car and they'd drive and camp out right well we used to climb into that camper and they had beds like up above like in these cupboards up above that you would open up well in one of the cupboards was an old jar of bacon bits and we ate it oh delicious can you imagine how long that was sitting in there no okay let's see if it if all right it brings back the memories let's shake a few of your hands I'm just going to take a little pinch yep all right you go first so we're not talking as we're crunching okay and I apologize I think you're going to hear the crunch of these suckers in my mouth that's okay they kind of look like pop rocks oh man they're crunchy are they tasty no my turn well they taste just like I remember them they do I'm kind of speechless I don't care for them oh I remember them so fondly taking little pinches out of that jar and that super hot camper hiding out you ate cat food too when you were a kid though I did I ate cat food I wonder if cat food tasted like Bac-os it did not did not it was crunchy like this but it was not as tasty oh there's an aftertaste it's not yummy well it's crunchy there's some bitter aftertaste that's so bad apparently the aftertaste just take Kristen I remember the first time I had bacon cut up it was so soft and chewy it wasn't crunchy like a Bac-o and I thought it was gross right because we were so used to having bacon which were these artificially crunchy soy bits yes right I remember learning that you could buy a can of real bacon bits yeah pieces and doing that thinking that was just like the height of fancy oh yeah Mom started doing that later on as you can get that more regularly yes and I don't remember if those tasted delicious or not no it was real fatty soft uh not so nice not as good well shall we get started with this recipe I think so so I am in charge of the cauliflower okay and it just says to break up a head of lettuce and a head of cauliflower into into a large plastic bowl now I remember Mom doing this she would layer the lettuce and then on top of it would be the cauliflower and then on top would be the onion and it would look really pretty oh I mean a layer of white and then white and then white with a nice white dressing on top I mean oh come on who would like that delicious heck yeah so I wonder how everybody gets the core out of their lettuce well I I'm going to assume that I do it the same way you do because it's what was taught to me by our mother right but the the heart of the lettuce she would just beat it up against the side of the sink yep I just turn it over and then I just slam it so I'm going to do that okay that was loud and then it just really pops out pretty easily and I'm cutting the yucky green stuff off the back of the cauliflower and we rinsed these already folks because we didn't want to have the water mess with any of our audio so these are clean we promise uh huh now Carrie I was always taught your mom probably taught me this too that tearing lettuce helps to prevent it from getting rusty yes on the edges but I looked that up oh and what did what did Sir Google tell you Sir Google told me that that's an old wives tale but you know what I beg to differ were other articles I read that said that when you tear it the cell membranes don't get totally cut in half sure like it would with a knife so I I think it's a good idea to just tear the lettuce I think I mean our salads never browned when we were kids no they really didn't and Mom was pretty much the only person eating a salad except when she forced it on us so that's true so I'm going to tear it for old time's sake that sounds good all right so in the 70s we were taught that the metal of the knife would cause like some type of a chemical reaction you know oh I didn't know that that's why we didn't do it now I'm not sure that that's true that may be part of the old wives tale but that's what you're going with that's what I'm going with now really the rust on the lettuce is caused by touching the air and so that made me think about this salad it's called 24-hour party salad right and the recipe says to make the salad and to leave it in the fridge for 24 hours a key part right making the salad right but then I thought how would that be beneficial you know it at first I was thinking oh the flavors are able to marinate well right if the iceberg lettuce is only touching cauliflower and the onion is only touching the cauliflower and then the parmesan cheese is only touching like the onion and then the dressing is on top of all of that how does it marinate I see where you're going with this right yeah I don't I don't know and the other thing is I do remember though that practically the minute we stirred the the salad and ate it it started to become soggy yeah do you remember that it did not last after mixing it up no it tasted great that I recall yeah but you're right it was almost like there was too much dressing after yeah yeah it just kind of pulled in the bottom and the lettuce got soggy I know maybe it's 24-hour party salad because you know it was so hard to get ready for a party that being able to do something 24 hours ahead of time and just put it in the fridge and be done and have it ready was such a nice thing well sure I mean as I'm looking at this list of recipes that Mary presented for Christmas 1974 being able to get one of those out of the way would be you know kind of just perfect yeah really nice make your life a lot easier absolutely yeah so as I am breaking up the cauliflower I want to share with everybody that I am breaking it all into small bite-sized pieces I appreciate that because my mother yelled at me nobody wants a giant chunk of cauliflower Carrie if it doesn't politely and easily fit into their mouth it's so true though so I did not know prior to making this if this was a Miracle Whip based salad dressing or a mayonnaise based salad dressing and so as I was thinking about both of those things I thought of Duke's mayonnaise cake and it turns out that Miracle Whip has their own version of a Duke's mayonnaise cake you know honestly that sounds kind of gross to me oh I think it sounds horrible because miracle whip has spices yes in a cake maybe it's a spice cake I don't know I didn't look into the Miracle Whip cake but I had heard that the Duke's mayonnaise cake came about due to the depression right so there were rations on eggs and oil and so the very brilliant housewives of that time used mayonnaise and there was no ration on mayonnaise so you could put that in the cake so as I was looking it up it turns out that that's the second iteration of the Duke's mayonnaise cake really the first one not really near as interesting however I'm going to tell you about it anyway so I know I really just you know brought the excitement of this story home I'm thrilled Carrie yeah but so what happens is apparently back in the day so this was 1927 they had recipes in newspapers oh and I believe it was an Oakland newspaper that a woman put a recipe in it and her newspaper column was known as home economics department and I was like oh my gosh it was Mary of the 1920s my gosh it was I had no idea that women have been providing this kind of stuff in different formats for I'm sure it went on long before the 20s I was that's right I just thought that was so cool that is so cool because Mary's actual title is a home economist right yeah yeah so basically the same idea yeah but she published through the grocery store not the newspaper anyway so this woman in Oakland she published her cake it did not call for mayonnaise it actually wanted you to whip together the eggs and the oil i.e. making your own mayonnaise and so she did that and then it came about again in the depression and during the depression a woman who was married to a Hellsmann mayonnaise salesmen Hellmann's what did I say a Hellsmann well Hellsmann give me some mayo aw Hellsmann um or Hellmann's

okay so let's try that again so a woman who was married to a Hellmann's mayonnaise sales person created this recipe and gave it to her husband to take to their massive sales conference oh as a way to sell more Hellmann's mayonnaise and boy did she yeah so I'm just saying girl power yeah girls um yeah so kudos to Mary and a legacy of the home economicsists you got it home economists words are not your friend today lucky for you it won't stop me from using them thank goodness well I am so excited that you brought that up because I looked up the origins of Miracle Whip oh you did one better I did no not one better just one to add on to your story because well more accurate since this is a Miracle Whip recipe that's true Miracle Whip also came about in the depression because apparently according to the United States government in order to be called mayonnaise it has to contain a certain amount of oil did you read that I read that I didn't know I some of this I knew some of this so right go on I'm all excited so they started to make Miracle Whip as a way to create a cheaper product because Miracle Whip has less oil it has more fillers like perhaps cornstarch it also has the spices and the sugar water too I believe right and so Miracle Whip made a lot of money for the craft company because it was cheaper to make than mayonnaise interesting yes now I'm really excited to tell you something about Miracle Whip okay okay so Miracle Whip was shown to the world at the Chicago World's Fair in 1933 really yeah really and along with the Miracle Whip salad dressing itself and that's why it's called salad dressing not mayo because it doesn't have enough oil they took the emulsifying machine that they had created just to make mayonnaise and Miracle Whip was a brand new contraption and guess what the contraption was called the Miracle Whip it was that's how they named Miracle Whip yes but Carrie it gets even more special there's more there's more do you know who attended the 1933 Chicago World Fair my grandmother our grandmother I have a bracelet you have that bracelet I wondered where it was I have it that she bought yes at the World's Fair it has a picture like of the World's Fair some of their various like buildings or worlds yes so cool so she was there possibly saw the Miracle Whip and it gets even better oh my gosh you know what other than the bracelet what she brought home as a souvenir from the Chicago 1933 World's Fair a wooden spoon what when I was talking to mom last night she said do you know another thing that um Grandma brought back it was a wooden spoon that was kind of like a small ladle that you would use in like a gravy boat oh my gosh I couldn't believe I thought how perfect it comes full circle Grandma's wooden spoon wow which she never hit us with no nor did she like to cook so it really is you know not that great true but she tried she really tried yeah did you just re-snap some of my cauliflower like it was too big of a chunk that was too big for my dainty mouth Carrie OMG I'm sorry that was rude I am so offended it's like mother asking me to decorate the Christmas tree and then moving all of the ornaments that's true now I'm trying to I'm doing this I'm trying to help you you re-snapped I'm layering on the cauliflower on top of the iceberg lettuce the white on the light green it's it's very monochromatically beautiful and we have it in a clear plastic bowl so we can see the lovely layers and then we're going to add a huge pop of color on the top of this the onion fantastic and then if I recall correctly on top of that just for a little more color we're going to add some parmesan cheese oh yeah so this is looking really good now my question is this seems like a lot of onion it does should I just maybe shall I sprinkle it on and then you tell me when to stop yeah but I feel like I'm gonna tell you when to stop when it's all gone because really the whole thing yeah it was a medium-sized onion but sometimes it's really strong I bet that is why you marinate it you let it rest for 24 hours oh because the onion is super close to the top and maybe it sits under the parmesan cheese and the mayonnaise and gets milder maybe maybe I don't know I I honestly don't know the answer I would love to know the history of why you would put a salad in in the fridge for 24 hours and not just wow it's so great it will keep for 24 hours but you purposely should be putting that sucker in there and leaving it for 24 hours yeah there are many many many recipes for 24-hour party salad available to you throughout the interwebs that's right and I was very nervous that I did not remember this salad well enough because I hate peas I mean I hate them from the very bottom of my soul and so I'd seen some recipes that had a layer of peas in the 24-hour party salad I was really freaked out that I was gonna have to taste this and pick around the peas do you remember that time that mom made you sit at the table until you ate your dinner and part of it was peas I have multiple memories oh the one I remember the most is what in my child's brain was the big win as all parents do you get into battle of wills with your children yeah and so I had to sit at the table until I ate my peas well I would have slept at the table I was not eating the peas it was not happening and so our table was connected to our family room yeah I sat at the table and gleefully watched everybody clean up after the meal I didn't have to first dinner I didn't have to help clean up Kristen wasn't allowed to sneak off to the bathroom and leave me doing all of the work oh hilarious so that was great and then my mom and dad would sit down to watch the six was the six o'clock news yeah as you did so I sat there not my fave but at least I got to watch it it was something to do and I think finally at eight o'clock she relented and I was able to go to bed but I didn't touch a single solitary pea oh my gosh it for me that was a big win followed by the big loss oh I think this is the one that I was talking about so that pea night was chipped beef on toast oh this is the one I was thinking of which I loved oh my gosh it was one of my favorite meals it was so good you guys remember that it was it's like dried beef in a jar right I thought it was like little packages I it doesn't matter yeah and it was chopped up and put in a like a white sauce a cream sauce yep a cream sauce over a piece of t- oh it was so yummy and apparently in my mom's mind it went with peas well it did it was delicious with peas Carrie so she had I don't I think she gave me three peas and I ate the first one gagged and puked all over my plate and there was no more chipped beef you puked all over it oh gosh I got like a piece of toast with a slice of ham on it but that did it after after the night of the big win yeah yeah followed by the night of the big lose um I was I never was served to pea no ever again so now we have the iceberg lettuce with the cauliflower on top and the onion and now I'm going to scoop out some of this parmesan cheese uh third cup of it and we'll sprinkle that over the top and Carrie's busy making the salad dressing oh I am with the Miracle Whip so I was talking to a friend of mine who you have friends one oh my one friend and he was mentioning that it's a boy it's a man he's all grown okay creeper

and uh so he was mentioning that Miracle Whip was the topping of choice in his house no mayonnaise none of that ours too oh yeah no doubt and so his childhood memory coming from a Miracle Whip house was going to a friend's house and being served tuna fish salad yeah sandwich and he took a bite of the sandwich and looked at everybody and was like there's something wrong with this tuna fish it's rotten how did you ruin tuna fish he was horrified at what they'd done to tuna they'd put mayonnaise in it it was just so different from Miracle Whip Miracle Whip is so sweet so sweet and it has you know spices in it that you know to his untrained mouth I guess yeah it was just disgusting absolutely disgusting and so he made a total fool of himself yelling at the family over their rotten tuna fish salad they were serving him well it's funny because we never had mayonnaise in the house growing up I don't remember it at all no and so I think I was honestly a grown adult before I had mayonnaise on a sandwich and I was kind of creeped out to try it I thought they were one and the same I thought Miracle Whip was a brand of mayonnaise yeah I did too you know I always knew it was called salad dressing but I just thought it was to be fancy right you know yeah because who would put mayonnaise on a salad I mean we're doing it now but you don't go mmm I'm gonna have a delicious salad what do I want on the top Caesar dressing no French dressing no I think I want Miracle Whip okay so that makes me think now that you're talking about salad dressings so back in the day if you wanted Ranch salad dressing you bought a dry packet of Ranch seasoning yeah and then you mixed it with mayonnaise or in our case Miracle Whip right because we didn't have maybe that's the reason I don't like Ranch dressings that I get like I make it here at home I have the packets Ranch I don't have Miracle Whip I mix it with mayonnaise and it doesn't taste right it just doesn't taste right because it's missing the Miracle Whip spices oh you're going to have leftover Miracle Whip if you need to whip up some Ranch that might be our whole issue because my son is a Ranch addict and he loves the Ranch that you get at restaurants and every time I try to make a recipe of a homemade Ranch dressing yeah he hates it which is the far superior dressing than anything you can get in a bottle I would think so too but he doesn't like you know I do add buttermilk the recipe calls for buttermilk and so I do add that and I think he doesn't like that tangy flavor so I can't imagine he'd like the tang of Miracle Whip I don't know we're gonna try it oh yeah I've totally lost count you have just been scooping here into the bowl the Miracle Whip it calls for one and three quarter cups

and in my geniusness I just grabbed the quarter cup and I thought no problem I'll do a cup and then I'll do three quarters cup I have no clue okay so here's what we're going to do give me this spatula I think that's a cup and a quarter you know what I don't think it's a cup and a quarter I think it's a cup oh my gosh yeah because I've got a quarter in my hand it is a cup and a quarter I just haven't recorded it oh my gosh struggling today aren't you sweetie all right words then counting so while we are continuing the measuring which is taking an obscenely long quantity of time since I can't talk and do any things this is the longest salad recipe anybody has ever listened to it has four ingredients and it takes an hour long podcast to explain how to make it y'all are going to be like um so the 24 hour that's how long this podcast is going to go on that's awesome

yep you got it it's 24 hour party salad because the party goes on for 24 hours as we talk your ears off all right you know what I forgot to put on the bacon ooh this looks good do you want a bite yes stick it in my mouth you're sticking your tongue out that's so gross

okay I'm going to shake it on it's good crunchy bacon it's good my husband made it perfectly oh no a piece of bacon fell in the mayonnaise let me get it out I ate it you need a half cup of this Wishbone dressing that's two two times in the quarter cup two times in the quarter cup and let's see if I can count that out I shook it up real good for ya awesome all right so the parmesan cheese is on all right and now the bacon which is the most colorful part of the whole recipe fantastic now I'm going to very carefully she's doing a lovely job by the way I remember doing this as a kid and how I would very carefully jiggle the spatula to get the salad dressing to cover and kind of cascade over all the lumpy bumpy things on the top yes all right let's go ahead and put that in the fridge and let that start doing its thing all right I'm going to get the salad out of the fridge because it has magically been 24 hours wink wink nod nod full 24 hours and Kristen is going to toss the salad well it smells yummy it looks like I remember it it does kind of smells like I remember it it's automatically going to be better than I remember it because the lack of Bac-os I mean kudos to the person who came up with making crunchy soy balls and selling them as a bacon alternative I know right and the fact that to this day you can still find some which means obviously there's a market for it if you have a recipe that you love because of its use of the Bac-os oh yeah I feel like you should let us know because well mostly because I'm curious I'm very curious if you have a good recipe that would use Bac-os I'll mail them to you because I don't know what I'm going to do with the rest of this jar all right I think we are well tossed it looks so creamy there is a lot of dressing on this salad look at that I'm going to put it in the bowls all right and we will taste this and tell you all what we think let me get some forks for us and let's taste all right Kristen go for it I will I'm not afraid to try this I'm excited she's shaking her head in a negative way it doesn't taste like childhood it's not as good as I remembered well that happens a lot like I don't know if you've watched a nostalgic television show yes that you just thought was the best a Great American Hero comes to mind look at what's happened to me that curly blond hottie yes so watched it again recently oh it's painful is it really oh so bad so so bad but you remember it as being fantastic that's right unfortunately that happens sometimes the memory of the experience is far superior to the actual experience yeah so I'll be interested to see what you think about this I think it tastes exactly like it did when I was a kid really yeah I really do it's way over dressed for my current taste yeah but as a kid that's exactly what I would have wanted lots of salad dressing to kind of hide the vegetables the only thing that I miss really is the extra salt of the Bac-os no you missed the Bac-os wait I have a fix for that Carrie oh my gosh let's add in a little Bac-os and see if it makes it taste more like childhood don't go crazy no no just a little sprinkle like I would sprinkle on like a pinch of salt okay I'm going to put some on mine let's take a bite all right I'm going to take a second bite first so you just go first okay it's a Bac-o laden bite it is oh my gosh I've been transported back in time the insane crunch of the Bac-o mm-hmm it's better and the extra salt of the Bac-o oh my gosh it tastes like childhood it made a world of difference whoever would have guessed never mind don't send us your Bac-o recipes we're holding on to those bad boys I will not be mailing this to you I will be finishing off this salad with a sprinklin o'bac-os and then she's gonna get a camper and store those puppers right in there I am wow this was a treat I'm not sure I would make it again oh I'm not taking it to any parties I can tell you that no but it was a trip down memory lane and what a fun one oh very much it turns out 24-hour party salad is not a party without some Bac-os it needs the Bac-os it does indeed well thanks folks for taking a trip down memory lane with us and we look forward to the next one bye

thanks for listening to mom's wooden spoon if you like what you heard don't forget to subscribe if you want a copy of this recipe or to check out our blog click on the link to our website in the podcast description if you'd rather you could get to our website through Facebook Twitter or Instagram pick your poison don't say poison we're making food