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The holiday special,
"Food Network Stars: Family Traditions" is an hour-long show featuring
most of FN's main cooking stars as of 1999. The show is set at a party with everyone
standing around, having a good time and talking about what their Christmas was
like when they were young. Each guest brought a favorite dish to the
party and they explain why that dish is significant in their life around the
holidays. None of the guests actually cook the dish
during this show: the item is already prepared and laying on a huge
banquet table.
Several guests could not
attend—Gordon Elliot for one—and so those folks have short video clips. Alton
Brown's video clip is him sitting in his GE home telling us a story about his 1971 Christmas and
why Ma Mae's Congealed Christmas Salad is a special dish. What follows is
just the transcript from Alton's segment.
SCENE ?
The Den
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Although my family always ate very
well during the holidays, there is one dish that kind of sums up the
whole Yuletide thing for me. It's my grandmother's congealed salad
which I had for the first time Christmas 1971, an otherwise disastrous
Christmas.
See, the day before, Christmas Eve, I decided it
would be a good idea to jump out of my tree house. I did, fell on
a rock, shattered my right arm. So, my mom and my dad packed me
off to this little hospital a couple of towns away. But when we
get there, there's only one doctor on duty, no nurses, no nothing. So, my mom has to help set the arm while my dad runs to the drug store
for plaster of Paris. So, this takes like all night long and by
the time they get my right side of my body encased in a cast, Christmas
Eve is over—no gingerbread, no eggnog, no Grinch cake, nothing.
Christmas morning comes and irony is heaped on injury when
I receive as presents a leather cowboy jacket—you know the little one
with the fringe that we all liked so much—and a BB rifle: neither of
which I could use because, you know, my plaster's up to here [indicates
shoulder/neck area]. So I decided to dedicate the rest of the day
to a serious sulk-fest.
But then, my grandmother shows up with this
incredible congealed salad. I mean it was Zen simple. It's
just lemon Jell-O, orange Jell-O, canned crushed pineapple, canned whole
cranberry sauce and lots of toasted pecans. It, it just turned the
whole day around for me, which is why every Christmas from then on,
regardless of what's in the middle of the plate, I make sure there's a
big fat slab of Ma Mae's Christmas Salad parked on the side of the
plate.
I hope you like it. Just remember, don't try to
use fresh pineapple because it contains an enzyme that breaks down the
gelatin in the Jell-O and, well, just stick with canned pineapple.
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