From the God Answers Prayer Department

Ask & You Will Receive: A True Story

 Evelyn Elaine Smith

Pass this on as a reminder that God answers prayer.  This past week after Mother's funeral, I had been praying for a sign that she was in Heaven.  This morning, a dear friend and fellow choir member at Central Presbyterian Church, Waco, Texas, whom I had met after Mother was a resident of a nearby nursing home, walked into the choir room and asked if I liked Heavenly Salad.  “Yes”, I responded.  “Mother made Heavenly Salad every Christmas”, for it was her signature dish. 

At this point, my friend, who never knew my mother, whipped out a photocopied page from a photocopied and bound at Kinko’s recipe book made up of a collection of family recipes that I had collected for a cousin who had married in the 1980s, and as far as I know only three or four copies were ever in existence.   On the top of the page were the words, “Heavenly Salad”, and my mother’s name was typed at the bottom of the page. I had never given my friend this recipe, and she found it yesterday going through the cookbooks that contained primarily Jewish kosher recipes of her late husband’s first wife.

HEAVENLY SALAD

one (medium) can crushed pineapple

one 8 oz. package Philadelphia cream-cheese

one package [6 oz.] lime jello [low-calorie]*

DO NOT ADD WATER TO JELLO.

Mix these ingredients together in a large (2qt. pan) and place over heat.  Cut up the cream cheese in chunks.  You can mash these chunks some as you stir them.  After the cheese has melted it needs to cool before you put in the other ingredients.  After this mixture is cool, add 1 ½ C.chopped pecans, one small bottle cut-up maraschino cherries, [1/4 C. celery] , and as the last item ½ pt. whipping cream, whipped.  Place mixture in buttered dish or mold.

Note: This salad stays firm and will keep for several days.

Evelyn Smith (Mrs. Walstein Smith)

*Handwritten adaptations of the recipe (written in my handwriting) btw appear in brackets.