what's up, doc? carrot salad, rabbit!

My mom was on a major health-food kick when we were kids - no sugar, no chocolate, no ice cream (enter plain natural yogurt that she dubbed "ice cream" and we believed her - suckers!), no birthday cake at parties, no bleached white flour. All natural. All organic before it was trendy to eat anything that wasn't processed to within an inch of its life.

All my sister and I wanted was a piece of cake that wasn't made of carob or honey. We finally got our way and some junk food when Mom went back to work when we were in middle school and she didn't have time to make loads of from-scratch stuff.

And now all I crave is wholesome organic food, but if you want it over here in Japan, you pay a HUGE premium. I've given up on the "green co-op".

I've been asking Mom for some of her recipes lately, and this carrot salad is gorgeous served cold in the summer. You just grate some carrots (or in my case, I used my hand blender chopper attachment and just chopped 'em up tiny), add some raisins, chopped pineapple (I chopped it really finely but you could buy the crushed kind if it's available in your neck of the woods - it's not here), honey, a little lite mayo (I never liked American mayo but Japanese mayo is not sweet like its American counterpart and therefore more palatable to me), and some lemon juice. You could also add chopped apples, which I do sometimes.

Mix it all together, slam it in the fridge, and a little while later you've got yourself a juicy, tasty hot-weather treat (the raisins get plumper the longer you leave it). You could even put some in your lunchbox, which I did for the hubster.

Do you have a favorite salad recipe from yo mama?