The word salad can sometimes take on a completely new meaning, if you happen to live in the South. Too be sure, there are the traditional salads with lettuce and tomatoes and cucumber and so on. However, Southerners can add a little twist to it.

An example would be gathering wild lettuce or dandelion greens and adding sliced tomatoes and onions and topping it with hot bacon drippings. Of course, you cannot linger over this salad; you want to eat it before the bacon drippings get cold. It is even better if you add the fried bacon to it.

Another Southern twist to salad is turnip salad. This is turnip greens and chopped up turnips cooked with a piece of salt pork or fatback until tender. All you need to complete this meal is a pan of cornbread, some mashed potatoes full of butter and some fresh green onions.

In the South, bean salads are old favorites. Three-bean salad combines wax, kidney and green beans with green peppers, minced onion and a vinegar and oil dressing or just mayonnaise. Another favorite is kidney bean salad. Toss together drained kidney beans, diced boiled eggs, diced onion and mayonnaise and serve with hot garlic bread.

For rice salad, you can use any kind of cooked rice. The ingredients vary from state to state but the main ones are some type of cooked shredded meat (bacon, shrimp, ham, chicken etc.), green peppers, onions, celery, garlic and herbs of choice. Mix it all together by lightly tossing and top with vinegar and oil dressing.

Potato salad has a thousand different recipes. However, they all have a spud of some kind in them. I have eaten it with mayonnaise and with zesty Italian dressing, sometimes with onion and sometimes without. It can be made while potatoes are hot or after they cool. But by far the best salad is with hot potatoes, diced onion, diced boiled eggs, sweet pickle relish, crumbled bacon, oregano, garlic, a little mustard and lots of mayonnaise.

Cole slaw is a salad made with grated raw cabbage, mixed with mayonnaise or pickle juice. Serving it on hot dogs is a strictly Southern thing. However, slaw is good as a side dish with almost any meal.

Carrot salad is an easy to make, delicious, healthy dish. Peel and shred the carrots, mix in a handful of raisins and stir in some mayonnaise. If you like, a little more crunch in your salads then add some pecans. This salad is full of the good stuff, with antioxidants in the carrots and iron in the raisins

Fruit salads are regular fare in Southern homes. Apple salad is diced apples (tart or mellow), some chopped walnuts and mayonnaise. Another cool salad is pears, iceberg lettuce, sharp cheese and mayonnaise. However, the best one is the watermelon, cantaloupe, and strawberry salad. Just make melon balls with the melons and add rinsed strawberries. Refrigerate for a few hours and voila. You can also add blueberries and raspberries.

Learn more about this author, Pamela Kay.
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