Shoes, Ships, and Sealing Wax

That fruit salad with those little marshmallows*

My mom made that fruit salad with those little marshmallows for Easter. I love that salad...it's such a sweet, gloopy mess, and to me it's an early harbinger of summer. And pure white-trash cooking, too. I collect those little spiral bound fundraiser cookbooks...those things churches and ladies auxillary groups do with collected recipes from their members...and Ambrosia (the real name for that fruit salad with those little marshmallows) is always in there at least once.

(So is a carrot thing called Copper Pennies. Has anybody ever had that?)

Anyway, an Ambrosia recipe...in case your grandmother and mother didn't make it for every family potluck from Easter to Thanksgiving:

Drain and dump into a mixing bowl:

A can of pineapple chunks
A can of fruit cocktail
A can of mandarin oranges
Personally, I like extra maraschino cherries. My mom still doesn't put them in for me, but one of my aunts always made hers that way.
A carton of sour cream or yogurt
Chopped nuts
Shredded coconut

Mix and chill. This is best served in a Tupperware bowl, either the vintage pale green plastic or one from the '70s earth-tone collection of harvest gold or burnt orange. Ok, maybe that's just for me.

Speaking of fruit salad and the 70's...

I have a very vivid memory of a family dinner party at the home of some friends of my parents. The wife was a Tupperware Lady, and had made a pistachio-pineapple salad in the Tupperware ring mold. I still remember her saying "It's a Watergate salad because the nuts look like bugs!"

Yeah, jokes about bugs and Watergate...seems like yesterday. Where does the time go?

Now you can eat bugs and nobody even thinks to make a Watergate joke. I'm serious about the bug eating. The Post reports that some people are actually looking forward to the emergence of the 17-year cicadas because they find them...crunchy.

John Zyla, an amateur naturalist in Ridge, in southern St. Mary's County, suggests laying a few dozen on a cookie sheet and baking them in a 350-degree oven for five minutes.

Then serve with toothpicks and a selection of condiments for dipping, ranging from sweet to savory: chocolate sauce, honey, melted cheese, ketchup, mustard.

Well, I do try to try new things. But sadly, I think I'll have to pass on cicadas. According to the article, "shrimp and lobsters, part of the same biological phylum that includes bugs, are essentially sea insects," and I am allergic to shrimp and lobster. Don't want to take any chances, after all. But let me know if you want to try it, maybe we can do a potluck. I'll bring that fruit salad with those little marshmallows.

* Two MASH references in a week!

Posted by Nic at April 16, 2004 07:54 PM