Dad's Salad and the Yellow Bowl

Dad used to make the most unhealthy salad every year for Thanksgiving. It had become his signature dish for nearly every gathering where one is required to bring a dish to pass. I guess this is what happened when Mom was no longer doing all of the cooking.

However the critics always raved about it at Thanksgiving and the big yellow bowl that he served it in was scraped until it was empty! [I must admit that I never understood the appeal.] The dressing was created with some concoction of French dressing, ranch dressing, mustard, horseradish sauce, a little Worcestershire sauce and bacon grease. There was no recipe -- he just threw this stuff in there and stirred. The items that were drenched . . . er, dressed, consisted of iceberg lettuce, tomatoes, onions, rotini pasta, eggs and bacon.

For some reason, I ended up with that yellow bowl after seeing it in Mom and Dad's estate sale. How could we possibly let that one go? And since I had the bowl, I was left with the task of recreating his salad. In retrospect, I was probably the last person that should have taken this on.

I thought perhaps I could upscale it a bit and use romaine lettuce. My niece agreed that I could probably do that. Whew. One hurdle crossed. But then I chose to chuck the entire dressing thing and make my own. I was afraid I couldn't pull off Dad's magic.

However, when I was making the bacon on Thanksgiving morning, everyone who passed through Karen's kitchen said something along the lines of, "You're not going to use the bacon grease???" I was crossing my fingers and hoping they wouldn't care.

I may try again next year or I may go a totally different route. We'll see.

Here's the smoky buttermilk ranch dressing I used (which I happened to LOVE but Karen said it had too much garlic.) The yellow bowl wasn't scraped entirely clean but it was nearly empty so I'll take that as a win.

1 clove garlic, peeled

1 cup buttermilk

1/3 cup mayonnaise

1/3 cup dairy sour cream

2 Tbsp. snipped fresh Italian parsley

2 Tbsp. snipped fresh chives

1 green onion, thinly sliced

1 tsp. white wine vinegar

1/2 tsp smoked paprika

romaine

cherry tomatoes

boiled eggs

bacon

rotini pasta