A new salad.. or a cold collation?

Food by Lois

If I want something light for a meal,even if the rest of the family is having something cooked, I combine various items – quite often leftovers, to make a cold collation… Is a cold collation generally meat? I’m not sure, but I make a salad type dish, dress it and enjoy it!

The other day I’d bought a fresh pineapple; then it became apparent that no-one else is very keen on it so I ended up having a very pineapple centred few days. I was going to make a salad… and there was the pineapple, sitting on its cut end at rather an angle and I suddenly thought it would be rather a vibrant addition to my salad!

On my shredded lettuce went pineapple, slivers of red pepper and celery, white and red onion slices, pistachio nuts, cucumber and a drizzle of Greek olive oil. I know other places make delicious oil, but I just prefer Greek. I must say I was very pleased with my salad, it tasted as good as it looked!

Back to the phrase, cold collation, apparently it came from the time when people would fast for religious reasons in the Christian religion,   and they would be allowed only two small meals. An evening collation in a  general sense was a small meal, weighing less than eight ounces… did they actually weigh it or just guess? I think they just guessed! The word collate comes from Latin and essentially means a bringing together. I think the phrase cold collation probably came into a general and not religious use when people were trying to be fancy – rather than offering their guests a light lunch or supper, maybe the preferred to offer a cold collation!

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