See, I told you so.

Hey, it’s me again, back on the blog wagon. I’ve enjoyed plenty of good meals in the last five months, not to mention a couple of really bad ones I could have told you about. But although I composed many a blog post in my head, somehow not one of them ever saw the light of day. What finally inspired me to sit down at the computer? Well, it's a rare thing for me to pass up a public opportunity to be right. And since my kids don’t believe me when I tell them something, maybe they’ll come around when they read it here. Everyone knows (especially school librarians) that young people believe anything they read on the Internet.

So there we were at the dinner table on Midsummer’s Eve, the usual four of us (some balancing spoons on their upper lips), plus son Kosta up from Berkeley, also my friends Mimi and Stephen and their little daughter Maddie. Because it was my birthday, the party had mustered their collective (and considerable) culinary talents in assembling a magnificent meal of barbecued tri-tip with Sicilian herb sauce, roasted potatoes, collard greens with bacon, and numerous other delicious things. Andreas had tossed together his signature backyard garden salad, a fanciful 21st century composition of baby lettuces, greens, scapes, shoots, tendrils, herbs, and flower petals. The appearance of this tasty admixture (in the dishy orange bowl, foreground) set off a discussion of good and bad salads. Mimi described a particularly awful occasion in England (which otherwise, I hear, has rather good food these days) upon which she had ordered a salad and been served some gruesome amalgam of apple and mayonnaise (and peas? I can't remember exactly).

So - it being my birthday - I took the opportunity to hold forth on the things that passed for salad in my youth, specifically “molded salads”. Faces around the table stared in growing disbelief as I described the unspeakable childhood horror of taking a spoonful of jello expecting - at worst - a canned fruit cocktail grape and instead getting a mouthful of crunchy vegetable suspended in aspic . “Um, we never had that in my house,” says my husband. Well, I suppose not, with them being immigrants and all. “That would be disgusting,” offers Mimi. What? This doesn’t sound like the voice of first-hand experience. Mimi’s husband Stephen, from Boston, remains silent. Kosta suggests that “maybe it was a Bay Area thing.” So I am left to wonder - does my "recollection" represented early onset Alzheimers? Or possibly this molded salad thing was a unique form of torture invented by Mom?

All is revealed. My mother might not have been the world’s greatest cook, but neither did she invent molded salad with vegetables. While clearing out some clutter from the storage room this week, I ran across Sunday Night Suppers, a small cookbook of World War II vintage that had belonged to my grandmother before being passed down to my mother and then to me. "The scattered remnants from the relish tray make sparkling molded salads" indeed. Thankfully molded salads are not hereditary - and I have the power to break this terrible cycle.

Just in case one of you fearless cookers just HAS to try this at home, here's the recipe, but I most emphatically do not recommend it. And you have to promise not to feed it to your kids.

Molded Vegetable Salad

1 package lemon gelatin

1 cup boiling water

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 tablespoons tarragon vinegar

1/2 teaspoon salt

3/4 cup cold water

1 to 2 cups vegetables (suggestions below)

Dissolve gelatin in boiling water. Add vinegars, salt, and cold water. Chill. When sirupy [sic] in consistency fold in vegetables. Pour into any desired mold - loaf or ring. Chill until firm. Unmold on salad greens and serve with dressing. Serves 6.

Vegetable suggestions:

Shredded cabbage, celery, pimiento and green pepper.

Chopped cabbage, diced celery and sliced stuffed olives.

Shredded cabbage, diced celery and cooked peas.

Grated uncooked carrot, diced celery and diced green pepper.

Diced pickled beets, celery, pickles and 2 teasooons grated horse-radish.

Hey - don't forget to serve with dressing. [shudder]