Built for Potlucks, made with heart

I will never forget the day when I drove into the entrance of our first house in North Illinois. In eighth month pregnant, dog in the back seat, husband still at work – I got out of the car and was immediately welcomed by the sum of a lawn mower. My new neighbors had taken a look at my swollen stomach and decided to help how they could. The grass urgently needed a cladding. A few hours later, they returned with a casserole and a seven -layer salad, from which I had never heard of until this day.

Welcome to the middle west: Where people are generous, nostalgia runs deep and often includes a Pyrex dish.

This day was the beginning of my fascination for the salad in the middle west – what, as the writer Ben Tansel puts it, is “more of a mood than a category”. In my seven years in the core country, I found out how wide this category really is. These so-called “salads” can include cool whip, jell-o, pudding, fruit cannon, crushed confectionery rods that summarize, summarize, fluff or hold together with a prayer. Shopping trips often included sightings of Watergate salad and other pastel-colored creations in the Deli case.

In the south, a different region with a deep affection for cool whip, immediate pudding and sugar-drawn creations known to some of these dishes. But it wasn’t many. Why the stronghold of sweet, shaky salads in the middle west? Much of it goes back to German and Scandinavian immigrants, especially to the latter, whose preference for forms of gelatin and milk containing milk became part of the eating culture of the middle west. Like the arrival of widespread cooling and convenience foods in the 20th century, and you have a region that knows how to feed a lot with everything that is to be done – and do it unforgettable.

In this collection of stories and recipes, writers and home chefs in the middle west share their memories of family associations, dinner in churches and even to Potlucks in overseas, where a bite of a familiar salad brought everything back.

The truth is that these salads are not just about taste. They are as people appear in times of joy and crisis. In view of the grief, you can be an ointment, a reflection of a mixed cultural identity, a taste of at home far from her or a bridge between the generations.

I hope you enjoy this love letter at salads in the middle west – whether you laugh, cry, remember, try a new recipe or at least call your grandma.

20 Retro midwestern salads that start with a box of Jell-O

From Karla Walsh

From creamy, crispy classics to excusing miracles, these nostalgic “salads” prove that everything goes in the middle west – especially when it is wobbling.

Meet

From Samantha Land

It is not a dessert. It’s not a joke. It is a salad in the middle west made of cookies, cool whip and a lot of nostalgia.

17 Potluck salads in the middle west, which could have been in the cookbook of the Grandma’s church

From Karla Walsh

These nostalgic cookbook favorites of the church cookbook -think of Snickers salad, macaroni salad and more -still affect the middle west.

The Jell-O salad that brought me through every chaotic family reunion

From Sophie Boudreau

Every child needs an coping mechanism. Mine was a strawbereer -brezel salad.

How Greek immigrants shaped the most famous salad from Detroit

From Samantha Land

Beets in canned food, iceberg salad and pink dressing – this is not average Greek salad, but in Detroit it is a classic.

The wild rice salad with low loads, which everyone wants in Minnesota Potlucks

From Marissa Hermanson

Minnesotane know: When wild rice fruit, crunch and a spicy dressing hits, he quickly disappears.

The salad of this legendary Marshall Field has been a tradition in Chicago for over a century

From Alex Fulton

Generations have ordered it. It has not changed – and that’s the point.

Somewhere between cool whip and fresh

From I am a petroleum

Two grandmothers. Two wild kitchens. The journey of a chef to find the Sweet Spot between Potluck charm and culinary precision.

Within the unofficial salad circle that holds rural Minnesota together

From Marley Flueger

The salads in the middle west – lively, creamy and served with a spoon – are more than a regional food tradition. They are part of an unspoken social contract: we appear to each other with something.

The Japanese American Potluck table: where memory, migration and mayo collide

From The Lin

A writer reflects on how the soft, mushy salads of her childhood wore Potlucks more than comfort – they wore history.

What kind of Snickers salad in Spain I have built up my own traditions

From Teal Jennings Yost

With a Thanksgiving pot in Spain, a “salad” in the middle west reminded me of what I wanted to pass on – and what I wanted to do my own.