🥗 Colorful Salads Made with Fruit and Veggies! 🥬

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• Well hello and welcome to “At Home Today.” We’re hoping you’re having a wonderful day. Maybe it’s not been everything that you thought it was gonna be. Like when you woke up this morning, you thought, this is gonna be a great day, I have it all planned. Sometimes things happen that cause those plans to go awry, as they say. And you know what? It happens to all of us. And sometimes you’re so planning so hard for that day to be so productive and you feel at the end of the day like you got nothing done. Well, the best thing I found to do at a time like that is just forget about that day, go to bed, pray and say, Lord, I just commit that day to you because I don’t know what was going on there. I know that tomorrow, you’re gonna gimme another chance with another day and I’m praying that you’ll bless the work of my hands. Bless my efforts. Whatever you have to do, ask God’s blessing on the day. It always works so much better. It really does. And when you do that, you’ve invited him to come into your day and then you don’t have to face it alone. He’s right there with you. He’s walking every step with you. And what I have found when I do that and I invite him into my day, it makes my day go better. I don’t have so many of those days when I don’t feel like everything’s going right because the Lord is there beside you, walking with you, helping you every step of the way. He tells us in Isaiah 41, “Fear not for I am with the. Be not dismayed for I am by God.” Fear not, what are you afraid of? Something going on tomorrow that you, you have to take a test or you have a big presentation to make, or you’re not balancing your books or whatever. Do not be afraid. Commit it to the Lord, ask him to help you to sort it all out and figure out what to do. He will. He’s always faithful. Today, we’re making summer salads. I know you’re tired probably of all the stuff that we’ve been grilling on the grill, you know, the hot dogs, and the hamburgers, and the steaks, and the chicken and the ribs. Today, we’re just gonna kind of pull it all in and say, okay, it’s salad time. Something light, something refreshing. Oh, this is so good. Three different salads we’re gonna put together for you today and we’re gonna start in just a minute, but first, here’s today’s “At Home Hint.” We’ll be right back. Here’s today’s “At Home Hint.” Dip each piece of apple in pineapple juice or a mixture of lemon juice and water. Toss sliced bananas in a mixture of one tablespoon lemon juice to one cup of water. If you’ve got a helpful hint that you’d like to share with us, send your hint to “At Home Hints,” Cornerstone TeleVision, Wall, Pennsylvania, 15148-1499. Well, the first two salads that we’re making are salads that would be good accompaniments to some other entrees that you’re gonna have, like if you’re gonna do some grilled meats or just if you’re gonna have a sandwich, even, these are good. And these are side dishes. Now, in the next segment, I’m gonna show you how to do a full salad for a meal. It’s awesome. You don’t wanna miss it. This, I’ve just taken two cucumbers, they’re regular cucumbers, and we’ve sliced them, peeled them and sliced them at about an 1/8 to a 1/4 of an inch thick and put them in. And then we’ve cut some onion, a sweet onion. Try to make it a Spanish onion or Vidalia onion. Whatever’s available now, a sweet onion. You don’t wanna go green onions here. You want like a good, sweet onion. And then we covered it with water and then we put some salt, like about a teaspoon of salt, half a teaspoon, a teaspoon, and these will hold until you’re ready to put the dressing on ’em. You can do that early in the day if like you’re pressed and you’re gonna put this on, if you’re entertaining or something. Then when it’s time to make the dressing, you want to drain these, okay? Now we’re making the dressing. And this is about a cup of mayonnaise ’cause we’re making creamed cucumbers. My mom could make them so good. And these on a Sunday dinner. There’s always just something about the way she could put that together and it tasted so good. You just think, man, if I just knew what the secret ingredient, but this was her recipe, but there’s something about mama doing it, you know what I mean? This is a couple of tablespoons and you can make this as sweet or as sour as you want. A couple tablespoons of sugar. We have here some apple cider vinegar, couple of tablespoons. We already have salt on them, so I won’t salt again, but I will certainly put pepper into the mayonnaise mixture and we have some milk and I just poured in and then I start to mix it. I’m gonna use my whisk because we don’t want any kind of lumps in this. We want this to be thoroughly blended ’cause this makes a wonderful dressing for our cucumbers. Now, the key here is when you have soaked those in that cold water, it keeps ’em nice and crisp. And when you drain it off, there’s a little bit of that moisture still on the cucumbers, so this can be thick. This doesn’t have to be like super thin ’cause that water on those cucumbers, that’s gonna make it thin out and be just perfect. Now all we do, we just pour all over. See how nice and creamy that is? No lumps in there, please. And we want to make sure we have enough. I would say this would serve probably eight people, or like if you really, really like them, Paul and I had these the other day and man, I’ll tell you, I think we ate two cucumbers ourselves. I just tell you, I just had it right. You know, sometimes you just get it right and sometimes you work at it. Well, I had it just right that day and what I would suggest that when you make these, if you’re gonna hold them for a little while, put them in the refrigerator because these like to be crisp and cold. They taste the best then. That’s all there is to it. You wanna put a little bit of paprika on the top or some cayenne pepper in there, you could. those are simple, easy creamed cucumbers. That’s all there is to it. Now, real quickly, I’m gonna show you this other one. This one is a pear and walnut salad. And we just have mixed greens, about 10 ounces of mixed greens. I have some of the greens that would come in like lettuce packages or the salad packages, but you know what? Sometimes that’s limp and I like the crunch of it, so I put some regular iceberg in with it, mix it together, mix it around. You get a better taste ’cause you have some crunch with the assorted lettuces, too. Now, on this one, this is called pear and walnut and we’re just gonna take our pear and we’re gonna just make pieces or slices. If you want to peel it, you can. I personally like the pear skin on it. These have to be meticulously washed and clean, which they are and that’s good. And then, I’m gonna just start cutting wedges out of this because fresh pear is so good in a salad. And then we’re gonna, just not making it with just pears, but we’re gonna team up some other delicious fruit with it. This is a time when we wanna be eating the good fruits. They’re all in season right now. This is the best time. The strawberries, the pears, the peaches. This is the time of the year when you really want to just, anything you can get your hand on, get it and eat it and enjoy it. Fresh pineapple. Oh my goodness. They’re so good. This is the tastiest time. Now, you can get these vegetables, I’m sorry, these fruits all year long, but they don’t taste like they do when they’re at the prime of their season, which is right now. And so we have a pear. Now you can put as much as you want. I would probably cut these up just so that it’s a little bit easier than having a whole big piece of pear to eat at one time, although when they’re good, they’re good. Best way to ripen these up, too, if you have some that aren’t quite ripe enough, put them in a brown paper bag on your counter overnight. You’ll be amazed at how that, I think it traps the gases, and then as a result, they really, really do up nice and they’ll turn brown and be really nice and ripe. Then, we have some blue cheese. We’re gonna sprinkle some blue cheese on top. We have some red seedless grapes that we have cut in half. Make sure they’re nice and sweet. They’re gonna go on top. Now, see, this is the way you would make this salad ahead of time. Presentation has a lot to do with it, right? Then, we have toasted these walnuts and we’re just gonna put the walnuts over the top of this salad. This salad is incredible. I’ll tell you what, if I had a piece of chicken breast cooked that would go with this, this could be a complete meal too because it’s just, it’s a full bodied salad. There’s lots going on here and look how beautiful it is. Now, the dressing that we put on that would be a ranch dressing. Would be like a ranch dressing in a bottle. If you make homemade ranch, that would be great too. This is what you want it to look like when you put it on the table. Then as people serve, they’ll go down and get some of this lettuce and all the goodies that are on top. Pear and walnut salad and our creamed cucumbers. We’re gonna take a break. When we come back, I have a fruit salad and a chicken salad that’s to die for. You’re gonna love it. Stay with us. We’ll be right back. Well, we’ve made our creamed cucumber salad. We’ve also done our pear, walnut, and blue cheese salad there in the dining room waiting for us to come soon as I do this one. This one, I love. I’ve had this several times and it is, it’s just very tasty and this is the great time of the year to do it. First of all, we have four chicken breasts that we have done in the microwave. Very easy. Just cook them up. And we’ve cubed them, small cube. That would be four. You want to do like one per person about. To this, we’re going to add chopped celery, Some garlic salt, and that would be to taste. I don’t wanna get too rambunctious with it. And we’re going to add our own regular salt. And pepper. Now, gonna use this one, we’re gonna mix that together. And then, we want to add our mayonnaise. This is a plain old, regular, good tasting, delicious, run of the mill, you might say, chicken salad. Everybody makes it like that. Need it a little stiffer. There we go. And so once you get this made, you could make this in the morning if you were gonna do this for a lot of people or for dinner that night or for a Sunday brunch or whatever. You just wanna make sure that this is chilled thoroughly. And you can add other things that you like to it. You know, if you don’t just like it plain, you could add, a lot of people add grapes to it, they add almonds, they add pineapple. You can add anything you want, any of the fruits, but I kind of keep this plain because all the fruits that I’ve been talking about are gonna be on the platter to eat along with this. If you see, I have my plates. These are my four serving plates that I’ll be using for four people coming for dinner. First thing, put leaf lettuce, two pieces on your plate. Now I’m gonna put a little mound of head lettuce, the crunchy lettuce, in the center. You say, why would you do that, Arlene? Well, there’s a reason. I’m gonna show you. Right in the middle. Push it down so it stays. Right in the middle of your leaf lettuce like that. Now, we want to mound this chicken and we wanna do that a portion on each person’s plate. So you would divide this up. That’s not gonna work. Let’s get a spoon. Here, we’ll just use this one. We want to mound it after it’s nice and cold right on top of that crunchy, crunchy lettuce because when you eat that, you want the crunchiness of that fresh lettuce along with your chicken salad. Now I’m making, I’m preparing enough here for four people. Now, this is your main meal for the day, so this should be pretty generous. Like that. Wipe my hand here. A little bit more. Right on top. And it will stay mounded on that plate. Just like that. Now, because I said there are so many fresh fruits that are available during this monthly summer months, we have taken advantage of that and what I’m going to do now, set this aside, now what we’re gonna do is just make a variety of all the fruits. Here’s what I have. Fresh pineapple, fresh strawberries, fresh grapes, fresh cantaloupe, fresh watermelon, and I also have some pecans that I’m going to put on at the very end. I have some bananas. First of all, you’re gonna work with color. Think about color. The yellow. We’ll put a nice pile of pineapple right there. Now, if you have husbands that I don’t like that pineapple, put extra watermelon on his and forget the pineapple. Try to accommodate the guys, you know, because if they complain, you got a problem, right Michael?
• [Michael] Oh yeah.
• Oh yeah. Michael says yes. He knows. He knows where of I speak. Not really. Hey, what would we do without these guys, right ladies? That’s right. So you want to divide that evenly among the four plates. There we are. Now, the next one we’re going to do, we have yellow, so we wanna put the bananas next to that, but let’s do something with a red. How about some grapes right next to it? Look how pretty that color is. Love it. Right next to it are the grapes. This beautiful? I saw this done and I tasted it in a restaurant that we were in one day and I said, I gotta show that to the viewers because this is so healthy. My goodness. This is one of the better dishes for health wise. I mean, just a lot of fruit and some chicken, chicken salad. This would be great if you wanted to do it for a wedding shower. On a smaller scale, you could do it. Fill it in. Now, we have the red. Let’s do some orange. I love this. Now comes our cantaloupe. Isn’t this pretty? You can see how the colors just bring the whole thing alive to you. The colors are what make it. Besides, this is all such good tasting goodies, right? And try to keep them uniform just as you’re making each one, you know, try to make them all the same because they just look nice. Looks like somebody gave some thought into the preparation of this. And you have. you’ve thought, well which, you know, which ones would be the best for me to make? Honeydew melons would be great on this, kiwi is good. Kiwi’s a little hard to handle sometimes. You have to be careful the way you cut it because it’ll fall apart on you. Next, maybe it’s time for that banana. Now, if you have to cut these earlier, remember our hint about putting lemon juice on them? That would be a real good clue. And they will hold, they will not turn brown. You could put pieces of pear on here if you wanted, peaches, fresh peaches. There are no limitations. There are no limitations. And these should be roughly cut into chunks, not uniform slices. And you’re gonna do, oh, about that many on each. Isn’t it beautiful? I love it! It makes me happy when something I’ve tried actually works. You know, just makes you feel like, whoa, I could do that. And I did it and look how nice it looks. And that’s the feeling of accomplishment and that’s what you get when you think things through, you plan them, you try it, and you follow directions well. Then you can be sure that you’re gonna have a product you’re gonna be pleased with. I know you people probably think I’m throwing this on the floor, but there’s a trash receptacle right there. We don’t do that on the floor here “At Home.” Well, sometimes I miss, but for the most part, we don’t. More bananas right there. Let’s see. Oh, we better do them over here, too. Almost there. The other thing I want to remind you is our watermelon will be the next one. Look at the color. This is awesome. Isn’t it pretty? Now, what we’re gonna serve with this, you say, well, what would you wanna serve with it? Well, two slices or a slice of banana, not bread or date, not bread, zucchini bread. Any of those kind of breads is perfect. That’s exactly what you’d want. And the last thing that you’re going to do before you serve it, now, if you make these ahead of time, put them in the fridge and keep them ice cold ’cause there’s nothing in here that needs to be room temperature. They all need to be good and ice cold. Just like that. And then you’re going to take toasted pecans and just drop them over top. Just a couple over top of your chicken salad. And there you have it, chicken salad with fresh fruit from the “At Home” kitchen. We hope you’ve enjoyed it. We’ll be right back with more of our program in just a minute. Stay with us. Please, don’t forget to send for those recipes that we’ve shared today and all the recipes for the entire month. And I hope that you have been watching and I hope you’ve been enjoying our summer salads today because they’ve been fun to do. And look at the color on this table. This table is just full of all the beautiful colors of summer fruits and vegetables. And let’s take a little trip around our summer fruits. First of all, we have our cucumber salad, creamed cucumbers. Delicious. See how milky that gets on there? That’s how you want your cucumbers to look. Yummy, yummy, and crisp and cold. Next to it is the pear walnut salad with the blue cheese and the grapes and the walnuts in there and then we put ranch dressing, either homemade or from the bottle, whichever you have time to do. That’s a wonderful salad. These are accompanying salads. On the plate in the front, as you see, our delicious, beautiful fruit salad. Somebody said, “Whoa, that’s a lot of salad.” Well, you know what? It is, but this is a dinner plate. If you wanted to make this in a smaller version, you certainly could cut your fruits by half and even your chicken salad, but this is a full meal. This will fill you up and it’ll last into the evening. Trust me. And you know what? This is kind of like a social thing where everybody’s sitting around talking, so you don’t eat all at once, but you keep nibbling and picking and better to nibble and pick at fruit and vegetables than some of the other snacks that are always enticing us. We hope we’ve enticed you. We’ve added a little bit of banana nut bread and some iced tea to it and you have the full meal and we hope that you’ll enjoy. We always enjoy when you drop by, so be sure to join us the next time because it just wouldn’t be the same without you here “At Home.” We’ll see you then.
• [Narrator 1] Furnishings provided by Levin Furniture, featuring Lane’s “Country Living” collection. Food provided by Jordan Banana Company, wholesalers of fresh food and vegetables in Dravosburg, Pennsylvania.
• [Narrator 2] Cornerstone TeleVision wishes to thank all our faithful viewers whose consistent prayers and financial support have made this program possible.