In Priase of the Relish Tray

[Le Taz Hot]

I recently went to visit some friends in The Bible Belt and was reminded of their use of relish trays at dinner and supper (lunch and dinner, respectively -- had to re-learn that one). I was inspired to do the same thing with my own meals.

I'm not a big fan of lettuce, most of the time it's out of season, takes a great deal of water to grow and doesn't hold a lot of nutritional value. Besides, I hate cutting up salads. Love the salads themselves but I hate the work. Enter the relish tray. You get a lot more variety, you just replace the things that have been used the previous meal and I think you get a lot more variety.

Some favorite ingredients include: celery sticks, baby carrots, radishes, cherry tomatoes, green onions, peppers, pickled okra, bread-and-butter pickles, dill pickles, olives (green and/or black), broccoli, cauliflower, cucumbers, and anything else you can think of.

I haven't been in here much and I just wanted to share that.

[Warpy]

1. And the dish of ranch dressing to dip it in

I remember relish trays in years gone by in the winter consisting of pickled gherkins, pickled mushrooms, canned olives, pickled onions, pickled beets and for the terminally posh, sliced pickled eggs. Those didn't need the dipping sauce.

[KC]

2. I haven't

heard 'relish tray' mentioned in I don't know how many years.
Growing up when holidays were over and then it was time for leftovers or doing just a simple family get together meal, my parents would always have a relish tray on the table with whatever else we were having to eat. It was always black and green olives, carrots, celery, cucumber slices, pickles and stuffed eggs. That Brings back a lot of memories!

[Freddie]

3. PA Dutch Grandma did this

Always carrots, celery, radishes, green olives and little sweet pickles. No dressing. I still the ceramic serving dishes in the shapes of a carrot and a bunch of celery.
My church serves the same thing (minus the pickles) at our semi-annual roast beef dinners.

[Galileo126]

4. We always had the marinated version

during Christmas, usually served when the antipasto came out. Marianted versions of artichokes, mushrooms, eggplant, black and green olives, and giardiniera. Personally, I liked it when someone added anchovies to the relish dish. It went weel with the artichokes and mushrooms.

Looks like I'll have to wait for Christmas... <sigh>.

[livetohike]

5. My Mom always had a relish tray on the table at holidays. I do it once in a while for our meals

but it's just my husband and I.

Nice to see you