Lunch Today - combination plate

Do you remember the term,"combination plate"? When salads as a meal first became popular in the culture in which I lived as a kid, a salad today known as "Chef's Salad", was referred to as a combination plate. Today I had the fresh red leaf lettuce soaking in salt water and the eggs boiled as I came in very sweaty from pulling weeds and spreading bark mulch. With parsley, dill and chives in hand I was ready to fix a wonderful feast for Al and me.

Salads are scrumptious, satisfying and easy to put together. In no time I had the lettuce chopped and then raided the fridge to discover some bean salad on its last legs and a cantaloupe. Al opened a tin of tuna and this is the outcome we've just enjoyed. But the dressing... this salad is all about the dressing.

My dear Mother taught me basically everything I know in the kitchen and I am more indebted to her than I ever imagined. This is the only dressing she knew as we were growing up since we only had lettuce salads in summer when we picked huge piles of lettuce and sorted them on a table outside to make sure no unwelcome guests were present under a leaf. The lettuce then was always chopped up quite finely along with a handful of baby dill weed and green onions, all growing plentifully in the back garden. The dressing was and simply is a mixture of: cream (I use half and half but whipping cream would be fabulous), vinegar, sugar. The vinegar will thicken the cream somewhat then of course you need a fair bit of sugar to offset the tang. Just pour this liberally over your plate full of greens and dig in...it's terrific!

I grew up in a home of eight children, five girls and three boys, a Mennonite home with strong Godly parents. I am the third oldest and I treasure my parents, siblings and heritage greatly. From a very young age,we worked alongside Mom in the kitchen. She would assign our duties: peeling potatoes, picking and sorting lettuce, rolling the "Klops"-the most delicious meatballs imaginable to a hungry teen, baking bread - yes, kneading it, chopping vegetables, pretending we were the cannery as we in assembly line fashion got jars and jars of vegetables ready for the canner - it just made the work fun when we pretended to have fun!, washing and drying dishes after every meal even when we had to get back to school on time for the afternoon. We always helped in the kitchen, with the laundry in summer when we were home - hanging the clothes out on a line and then getting them back in, their fresh lovely scent tickling our noses, then the ironing, yes in those days we ironed everything, and house-cleaning. This is where we learned our cooking and house-keepiing skills. On school days Mom prepared a feast, the main hot dinner-type meal of the day ready for all of us, every day- meat, potatoes, vegetables and lots of bread with some variations. My father maintained that Mom was an expert in cooking, which she was, and she should continue cooking in the same style even in their last years together. She did, but she knew where to draw the line.

Back to the salads: Growing up in our little Prairie town, I babysat for our next door neighbors- a doctors family. It was a wonderful place to be. One evening I was given the instructions to prepare a salad for the good doctor when he got home. I imagine I would have only been twelve or thirteen at the time. I was desperate to know what kind of dressing he might like and since I didn't see any prepared ones in the fridge I prepared the only one I knew how. Later his wife, who was not from a Mennonite background told me how much her husband had enjoyed the dressing on his salad. It was just like his Mom's used to be - he was from a Mennonite background. So phew, I was pleased that I trusted my judgment on that.