There are birthday dinners built around beautiful restaurant reservations, carefully chosen wine, and menus that have been planned for months.
And then there are birthday dinners that require a can opener.
For my friend’s 50th birthday weekend in Louisville, her Sunday dinner request was wonderfully specific: she wanted the foods she remembered growing up with in the South — the sort of things her mother might have pulled from the pages of a well-used Betty Crocker cookbook in the 1970s.
Nothing sautéed.
Nothing drizzled.
Nothing involving microgreens.
She wanted the good stuff.
Ambrosia salad. Waldorf salad. Bourbon dogs. Cocktail meatballs. Cheese ball and crackers. Onion dip. Artichoke dip. Cold shrimp. Crudités. Fritos. Jell-O shots.
It was the last meal we shared together as a group that weekend, and despite our thoroughly modern, supposedly sophisticated palates, we happily flashed back to 1976.
And you know what?
It was delicious.
A Birthday Menu from Another Time
Born in 1976, this dinner became an edible time machine, back to the foods of her childhood.
Everyone pitched in.
Cans and cans of fruit were opened. Grapes were washed and sliced. Apples were chopped. Homemade whipped cream created an impressive amount of noise pollution in the kitchen while slow cookers simmered away on the counter.
And there was grape jelly. So much grape jelly.
At one point, looking around that kitchen, I had to laugh.
When was the last time I had used a can opener this much?
Somewhere along the way, chefs and housewives stopped making these foods.
Our salads got greener. Our appetizers became charcuterie. We learned to roast vegetables, massage kale, pickle onions and sprinkle goat cheese on practically everything.
And I'm certainly not suggesting we abandon any of that.
But standing in that Louisville kitchen, I wondered, when did we decide the old foods weren't good enough anymore?
Ambrosia: Once Fit for the Gods
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Ambrosia may be the perfect example.
Today we remember it as a gloriously confusing combination of mandarin oranges, pineapple, coconut, marshmallows and whipped cream that appeared at family holidays and potlucks.
Is it a salad? Or is it dessert?
Nobody knows.
But ambrosia's beginnings were surprisingly elegant.
An early published version appeared in Maria Massey Barringer's 1867 Dixie Cookery, where the recipe was simply fresh oranges, grated coconut and sugar.
At the time, those ingredients weren't ordinary at all. Citrus and coconut were exotic luxuries, increasingly available as transportation brought previously distant foods into American kitchens.
Over the decades, ambrosia changed along with the American pantry.
Marshmallow entered the picture in the early 20th century. Canned pineapple and mandarin oranges made preparation easier. Eventually sour cream, whipped topping and other convenience ingredients transformed it into the fluffy version so many people remember from mid-century tables.
Our Louisville version included homemade whipped cream, which somehow felt like the perfect meeting of old and new.
Was it sophisticated? Not particularly.
Was it pretty? Well...
Ambrosia has never been especially concerned with its Instagram scroll.
But one spoonful tastes like citrus and coconut and sweetness and summer.
Seriously, it's happiness on a spoon.
Waldorf Salad Had a Much Fancier Beginning
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Waldorf salad has an even more glamorous résumé.
Long before it became a fixture of luncheons and holiday tables, it was created at New York's Waldorf Hotel in the late 19th century and is generally credited to the hotel's legendary maître d'hôtel, Oscar Tschirky.
The original was remarkably simple: apples, celery and mayonnaise.
Grapes and walnuts came later, creating the version most of us recognize today.
Think about that for a minute.
A salad born at one of America's grand hotels eventually landed beside the canned ham at countless family buffets.
And somewhere still later, many of us replaced it with essentially the same idea dressed in newer clothes.
Today we toss Honeycrisp apples with greens, candied pecans, goat cheese and vinaigrette.
Different presentation. Same basic mixture.
Sweet fruit. Crunch. Something rich. Something tangy.
Maybe Mom knew more about flavor balance than we gave her credit for.
And Then There Were the Bourbon Dogs
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Bourbon dogs are gloriously unapologetic.
Hot dogs. Chili sauce. Ketchup. Grape jelly. Bourbon. Slow cooker. Done.
Versions of bourbon-sauced hot dogs appeared in the mid-century era of American entertaining when convenience foods weren't something to hide — they represented modern life.
Hot dogs were inexpensive, familiar and practically guaranteed to please a crowd. Add bourbon and a sticky sweet-and-tangy sauce, and suddenly an everyday ingredient became party food.
Which, when you think about it, is rather brilliant.
You didn't need an enormous grocery budget to invite people over.
You didn't need an elaborate menu.
You needed something warm in the Crock-Pot, something crunchy in a bowl and enough chairs.
Modern cocktail sausages and those famous grape-jelly meatballs are descendants of exactly the same idea.
And yes, we made the grape-jelly meatballs, onion dip, and giant cheese ball too.
Because once you've committed to 1976, you commit!
Bring it to the table
Part of the fun of a nostalgic menu is serving it family-style, with bowls and platters passed around the table. Use the pieces you already love, and if you’re looking for something to add, explore my At the Table collection for serving and gathering finds.
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Maybe We Should Bring the Nostalgic Side Dish Back
There is an argument to be made against almost every food on this particular menu.
Too sweet. Too processed. Too much mayonnaise. Marshmallows?
Not enough vegetables.
Fair enough.
I wouldn't serve this dinner every weekend, but perhaps food doesn't always need to justify itself nutritionally. Sometimes food should serve another purpose.
Sometimes we need to let a spoonful of ambrosia take us back to Mom’s kitchen.
Sometimes a Waldorf salad should remind us of Christmas dinner with our grandparents.
Sometimes a Crock-Pot full of ridiculous little weenies is exactly what it takes to make a group of adults giggle around the counter and, for a moment, forget the weight of the real world.
And sometimes cans of fruit, grape jelly, and mini marshmallows become exactly the right food for celebrating fifty years of a life.
That matters. These moments are important.
The À la Table Lesson
We spend a lot of time trying to make things better.
Better ingredients. Better presentation. Better menus. Better recipes. Better social media.
I'm certainly guilty of it.
But that Louisville dinner reminded me that better isn't always the point.
The point is knowing what belongs at this table, with these people, on this particular day.
There was nothing French about this meal. Nothing especially elegant.
It certainly wasn't sophisticated. And yet, it couldn't have been more perfect.
Because the menu wasn't asking us to impress anyone. It was asking us to remember.
To laugh.
To celebrate a friend - her way.
To tell stories we'd heard before and somehow still wanted to hear again.
To taste childhood for an evening and then make a few new memories to go with the old ones.
That's why I don't think we should completely retire these silly dishes.
They are edible touchstones.
A connection between the people we were and the people we've become.
So yes.
Bring back the nostalgia once in a while.
Open the mandarin oranges.
Buy the marshmallows.
Get out the grape jelly.
And find the can opener.
Not everything we bring to the table needs to be new.
Sometimes the most meaningful thing we can bring is something worth remembering.
Bring it to the table.
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