Didn't Know What We Were Missing

(By Dayna Smith For The Washington Post)

Recently, however, my sister and I started talking about it: Pink Stuff, officially known as Cranberry Dream Salad. Should we ask Mom to make it again, for old time's sake? We missed it somehow, with its weird, frozen mixture of ingredients that usually don't keep company.

The recipe is older than I am, having come from a 1966 booklet accompanying a blender that was probably a wedding gift to my parents. It is a part of my childhood, along with the lox and eggs and bagels my dad fixes on Christmas morning, a tradition inherited from my Jewish uncle.

During our big holiday dinner, my mom and I would let the Pink Stuff defrost a bit in her cornflower-pattern CorningWare dish. As it softened, it was kinder to our sensitive teeth, and that made it easier to process all its ingredients: the cream-and-cranberry sauce mixture, sweet pineapple and pecans. The sauce mixture by itself would have made it a yummy semifreddo. The other ingredients made it . . . something else.

In truth, we now regret retiring the Pink Stuff so abruptly. Yet we hesitate to bring it back. Like life experiences, some food is better left in the past, such as the piña colada cake I once made with a frosting mix.

If we do resurrect the recipe, will the Pink Stuff taste the same? Will it go to waste? Maybe we will discover a new appreciation for it, after the roast beast, broccoli casserole and at least two kinds of potatoes (mashed and sweet).

I'm thinking that it doesn't really matter how it turns out, because it will taste like home.

Leslie Waugh is a copy editor on the Metro desk.