BH&G All-time Favorite Salad Recipes: Avocado and Egg Salad

The temperature has risen in a big way here, hence I’m not too keen on turning on my oven. So that means salads. Today I am gonna crack open a volume from my collection that I haven’t yet featured: the 1984 edition of Better Homes & Gardens All-Time Favorite Salad Recipes. And I can’t believe that it took me so long to bust this one out, because look at the cover!

The cover is great: there is an ice bowl stuffed with what looks to be a Salad Nicoise. And there’s a big, amber, Jell-O salad filled with apple slices and—um, cauliflower? Seriously, how have I not felt compelled to cook something from this one yet?

You can tell that we’ve moved onto the 80s because the photography is less sepia-toned. It’s crisper. Colder. And not just because of the copious amounts of ice on this cover.

And, as an aside. I now really want to learn how to make an ice bowl. It can’t be that hard. Just a bowl with water and then another bowl inside of it. At least that’s how I imagine it would work.

Whatever. This is the salad that I chose to make for myself:

I picked this one because, like Liberace’s Special 15-Minute Eggs, this is what I like to think of as a “single-girl special:” super-simple, can serve one, and I already had all of the ingredients in my fridge. Well, with the exception of the avocado.

Plus, it features bacon. And I love bacon.

But going back to the avocados, are they in season right now? I only ask because they definitely had a shit-ton of them at the Safeway.

And another thing: is an avocado a fruit or a vegetable? I am assuming a fruit because of that big pit and the fact that it grows on a tree. Is that what differentiates a fruit from a vegetable? I think that there were avocado trees in the “Fruit & Spice Room” when I worked at Phipps Conservatory, so I’m going to vote fruit here.

I confess: I microwaved the turkey bacon. Why dirty a skillet? Aside from that, I just did what BH&G told me to.

All mixed together and tucked back into the avocado shell:

This was really delicious. And if you like avocado and bacon, you’d like this, too. To serve, I toasted up a piece of the Sally Lunn I baked last weekend (don’t worry, I will share the Sally Lunn with you when I get to #35. Flank Steak Teriyaki).

I would definitely make this again. But, to make this easier (translation: easier to clean up). I would have changed the recipe as such: start with the mayo, mustard, and lemon juice dressing in a large bowl. Then into that bowl, add the chopped egg, chopped bacon, and green onions. Mash the avocado separately and then fold that into the other mixture. Right there we’re down a bowl!

But still, I really can’t complain. Tidying up was minimal. It tasted great. And I didn’t break a sweat while in the kitchen.

And! An announcement:

You’ve experienced the Knoxapocalypse and The Vincent Price Halloween Cookalong. And now it’s your turn to join in the fun!

We are recruiting bloggers, retro cooks and fans for our 1st Annual Vintage Pie Recipe Swap – The PIEATHALON! If you have a crazy/awesome/gross/delicious vintage pie recipe and you would like to be included in this, please email me at embrungo@yahoo.com with your recipe by this Friday 5/30 . Be sure to put “Pieathalon” in the subject line.

You will receive your mission (if you choose to accept it!) sometime next week.***Please note that you will not be making your own recipe, but will be assigned another recipe at random.

To be eligible for Pieathalon participation: you have to have a blog and your recipe has to come from your own recipe collection (not Pinterest, FB, Google Images, Flickr, etc.) Your submission needs to be posted to your blog on 6/30, so if you want to join, make sure you can post on that date! 

Thanks and I hope to hear from you!