My mother managed a large household in a small house on a tight budget.  She had five children within a decade during the 1950s.  Armed with her Better Homes and Gardens cookbook, she prepared dinner every evening for a table of seven and had it ready by the time Dad came home from work.  Diet and meal recommendations in the US at that time were meat, starch, vegetable.  The food pyramid was yet to be invented, but family traditions provided the same guidance.

Our family dinners were always accompanied by a green salad: iceberg lettuce, carrots, celery and tomatoes, tossed into a large bowl and passed around the table for us to fill our individual plates or salad bowls.  My mother’s care in stretching her self-imposed grocery budget resulted in a few interesting dinner rules, one of them being that no one was permitted to take more than two slices of tomato in their salad portion.  (Another consequence of her frugality was that frozen orange juice was diluted with an additional measure of water, permitting us all to have a full juice glass at breakfast).

There was only one option for dressing the salad.  My mother would never consider buying those expensive bottled dressings because my dad could make a French-like salad dressing at home.  We would often watch him do this just before dinner.  A bottle would be fitted with a funnel, into which he would deliver various amounts of spices from the small spice jars kept on a lazy susan in the cupboard.  It was quantitatively uncalibrated; he’d just shake some into the funnel, give the lazy susan a turn, and see what else was available to add to the mix.  He would then add ketchup, followed by vinegar, oil, and water.  On occasion he would add drops of Worcestershire or lemon juice.  The bottle would then be capped and vigorously shaken to mix the ingredients into a tart and flavorful concoction that would eventually separate back out to something clearish floating over something reddish.  Shaking to remix the dressing before putting it on our salad was part of the dinner ritual as we passed the bottle around the table.

We all grew up with the understanding that dinner was always accompanied by a tossed salad, and there was only one dressing for it—Dad’s.  Over time of course, we grew up and left home and were forced to explore the commercial options for salad dressings.  They always seemed to come up short- too sweet or too thick or not enough tang. There was always some deficiency compared to Dad’s.  Later on, at extended family gatherings we would insist that he bring his dressing to provide an option at the salad station.  At some point, we pressured him to write down how to make it so that we could, in principle, reproduce it.

He yielded to that pressure.  To somehow quantify the arbitrary shakes into the funnel must have been an interesting exercise for him; it took a few iterations before he was satisfied.  He recorded his measures and supplemented them with an elaborate procedure to put them together.  This is not the technique I watched as a kid (which was quite simple– just shake the bottle), but the recipe at least gives a glimpse of how he thought it should be done.

I recently encountered that recipe and made a few batches of Tod’s Homemade Salad Dressing.  It was close, but did not match exactly my long-ago fond memories of it.  On the other hand, there may not be anything that would match those memories.

Realizing that perfect reproduction was impossible, I made an adaptation that scales the recipe to fit a standard size bottle and utilizes only two distinct measuring tools.  I invite you to try it.  Feel free to make any modifications you think might improve on it.  Dad would.

Tod’s Homemade Salad Dressing
Thor’s variation, using only two measures and fitting in a 16-oz bottle.

Ingredients:
1 tsp    celery salt/ground celery seed
1 tsp    onion salt/onion powder
1 tsp    paprika
½ tsp   salt (fill the tsp measure halfway)
½ tsp    black pepper
½ tsp   lemon pepper
1 cup   vinegar, in two ½ cup parts
½ cup   ketchup
¼ cup   oil (fill the ½ cup measure halfway)
¼ cup   water

Directions:
Add the spices to the bottle.
Add ½ cup of vinegar and shake to dissolve spices in the vinegar.
Add the ketchup, probably using a funnel.  Shake to mix.
Add the oil, rinsing the ketchup through the funnel.  Shake.
Add the remaining vinegar, rinsing the oil through the funnel. Shake.
Add the water. 
Shake. 
Shake.
Shake.

Lower calorie option:  omit the oil, increase the water.

Other optional ingredients to consider:  Worcestershire sauce, lemon juice, garlic…

Every day begins with coffee, of course.

Which fortifies me as I peruse the headlines and digest my various online sets of news sources.

Eventually, I reach my fill of virus and political news, but it can take several hours.  By this time, it is mid-morning and I think about which collection of projects to work on that day.  I have several categories:  some of them are administrative, the overhead of life, like gathering info for filing taxes, or processing the mail that has accumulated, aging any viral contamination on its outer surfaces.  Or making another pass at compiling the email addresses for my high school class, which drafted me onto its reunion committee.

Another category is more physically constructive.  It includes working in my garage shop, on a woodworking project or attending to the never-ending items on the home repair list.  If it is sunny, I will opt for the session in the workshop, whose clerestory windows provide a strong boost to the positive mood that comes from working with tools and material in my hands.

Lunchtime brings me back to the house to enjoy something delicious that Poldi has cooked up.  These days in quarantine have led her to expand on her already extensive skills in the kitchen.  I am the beneficiary.  She updates me on whatever news she has gleaned from her sources.

The afternoon brings another set of options.  We listen to the press conference of the state health department, absorbing the meaning of today’s covid infection and death counts.  We once again are appreciative that as retirees we can easily isolate, but fear for our neighbors, friends and family, who must somehow continue to carry on with their business and livelihoods but must curtail it to conform to the allowed social distance.

While the sun is still amplifying the ambient temperature, Poldi and I strike out for a neighborhood walk.  I have analyzed the relative risks of contracting the virus while outdoors and crossing paths with passersby, and our masks are at standby on our neck.  If we engage someone for a conversation, or enter a storefront, the masks are immediately deployed.  The outing in our neighborhood is therapeutic.  Although I am an introvert, Poldi needs more connection.  A walk around the block is not enough, but it helps.

The evening brings us back to home life.  Poldi pursues her passion for cooking.  I work on my various interests including my archives of photographs, wondering how best to curate them for subsequent generations and researchers.  Yes, I know, it is a bit of hubris, but it helps me follow Carl Sagan’s advice when asked about the purpose of life:  “To do stuff!” 

Our evenings wind down in front of the television, finding programs and episodes that distract us and amuse us.  We fall into bed, sometimes exhausted by the day’s events, and sometimes relieved by our shared life throughout the pandemic. 

We are the lucky ones.  We are confined to our home with someone we love. We wish you the same.