The Pineapple and Mayonnaise Salad

I am not going to look this up on the internet because in my mind, my mother created this abomination of a "salad."  And when I say that, I'm not saying it with hatred, because it's something I grew up with, but when you hear about it you may well have your own personal "eww" response.

My mother got recipe ideas from magazines all the time.  Some were winners and were incorporated into her general meal rotation and others were not.  I don't know where she got the pineapple and mayonnaise salad idea, but she must have dubbed it a success because we saw it regularly at the dinner table.

Imagine, if you will, a boring leaf of iceberg lettuce placed flat on a salad plate.  Then, picture a can of pineapple slices in juice.  Take one of those pineapple rings and place it right in the middle of the leaf of lettuce.  Next, add a rather measurable dollop of mayonnaise into the pineapple slice hole that once contained the core of the pineapple,.  Finally, to add color and balance, add a single maraschino cherry right in the middle of the blob of mayonnaise.  Salad complete.  Serve to your guests.

Was it from Good Housekeeping?  Did she find it in Reader's Digest?  Maybe it was from the Sunday paper.  I don't know, but it stuck around and no matter how much complaining I did, she still served it.  And guess what, I ate it.  I ate it because there was a cherry, and I loved those.  And then there was pineapple and what child doesn't like a slice of juicy, tangy pineapple?  I rarely ate the lettuce leaf and commonly much of the mayonnaise was left on the plate.  But I can say from memory, the combination of flavors from the ingredient cross-contamination that happened was really quite good, even if I did a deplorable amount of complaining. 

Was it a fad from the seventies?  Did my mother invent it?  She reads this blog, perhaps she'll remember where the pineapple and mayonnaise salad originated from.

Edit:  After speaking to my mother, she said I forgot an ingredient: shredded cheddar cheese.  I do remember it now.  And she said the recipe was one from her youth that was offered as a salad/dessert at church fundraising events.  She said the spaghetti dinners made the most money and the salad/dessert was a popular item in the top corner of the tray.

The Big Boy Update:  He can open the door?  Yes, he can open the door to his room and get out.  But he doesn't seem to think it through that often and actually escape his bedroom lair.  If you ask him to open the door he will demonstrate.  But left to his own devices when he wakes up, he just goes and plays with toys in the playroom.

The Tiny Girl Chronicles:  Wetting his bed.  She (and he) are getting better at using the potty.  She doesn't have the skill at removing and putting on her pants/underpants that he does, but she does like to go when she's sat on the potty.  This means much of the responsibility of making sure she's not wetting everything else is on us to get her to regular potty visits.  This afternoon, we missed a visit because she crawled into her brother's bed and shortly it was wet. 

Someone Once Said:  It is hard to shake off any taboos a child is indoctrinated with in his earliest years. Even if he learns later that they are nonsense.