When I was a girl we had grape salad on special Sundays. The salad consisted of head lettuce (that would be iceberg), chopped apples and grapes, topped with a mayo sweet and sour dressing.
Tonight I modified a Poppyseed Salad Recipe and realized it is very much like the special salad of my childhood. The salad has lettuce, quartered black grapes, chopped apples, sliced almonds, topped with a poppyseed dressing.
Why was the grape salad a special salad? Grapes were not commonly found throughout the year in an Ohio village during the 1960s.
Living on the California Central Coast produce is abundant at the Farmers’ Markets and even in the grocery stores. Actually, when I have visited Ohio in the past few years I was pleasantly surprised to find produce looking quite nice. Well, except for the neighborhood market near the village where I spent the first 20 years of my life.
For folks with house bunny companions–it is a good idea to cut grapes into pieces when offering them to your bunnies, and watching the bunnies eat them before leaving the room.
I had a bunny, Baby Cornell who very nearly swallowed a whole grape. Yep, that is very nearly. The grape became lodged in his throat and it wasn’t an experience that I care to repeat. He also had a problem with celery. So, now I always chop celery for my current bunnies. It could have been that Baby Cornell was simply eating too fast, but he changed how I have fed all of the bunnies since.
Yes, I named my bunny Cornell after Joseph Cornell, one of my favorite artists.