Bonus Recipe: A JanFebs Shaved Salad

Forgotten Friends

I owe an apology to Good Housekeeping.

After years of loyally clipping its homey recipes, I heartlessly abandoned GH for what seemed to be a shinier object. All it took was one Julia Child Christmas dinner in the late 60s (filet of beef stuffed with pate and truffles) prepared by my Upper West Side Original Hipster stepmother to make me switch my allegiance. A LIFE magazine reporter and researcher, she’d gotten ahold of early galley proofs for The French Chef Cookbook. She taped the pages around the kitchen, and we were launched in a flashy new cooking direction.

Off we went on the subway to the poultry district for chicken feet (stock for something), to Macy’s food court for pate, and to the meat packing district for the best of beef. Each ingredient had an entire neighborhood devoted to it in Manhattan, and making that meal was like a treasure hunt. (Did I mention this was before kids?)

So for decades, we continued to fall in love with one well-known chef and cookbook after another — many of them discovered by KD’s own Nancy Pollard. Good Housekeeping, alas, was likely not among them. That changed this past summer, when Nancy assigned me the salad course to amplify a Pollard feast. I hit Google, searching for something festive and fresh, and up popped Shaved Carrot and Radish Salad — the Good Housekeeping recipe included below as our bonus recipe honoring the fifth Tuesday in the month. It. Was. Delicious. Jewel tones, crisp textures, sweet/citrusy flavors. This is a perfect salad for year-round enjoyment, and all brought to you by Good Housekeeping. I feel bad that I was so surprised by the recipe’s provenance.

Tried, True, and Triple-tested

I should never have turned my back on Good Housekeeping in the first place.

In all honesty, I don’t think they missed me. GH has been faring quite nicely, thanks, while I was straying. The magazine has thrived for more than 130 years, guided by its original mission to “produce and perpetuate perfection — or as near unto perfection as may be attained in the household.”

According to goodhousekeeping.com:

Today, Good Housekeeping along with its legendary consumer product testing facility the Good Housekeeping Institute [originally called the Good Housekeeping Experiment Station] and consumer emblems, the Good Housekeeping Seal and Green Good Housekeeping Seal, is an American institution. Purchased in the U.S. by Hearst in 1911, Good Housekeeping now has nearly 17 million readers of the print and digital editions, over 45 million readers on its website, and almost 7 million social media followers.

The truth is, none of us should be surprised that Good Housekeeping creates stunning, modern recipes, as it triple-tests thousands of them in its test kitchen. No wonder a Good Housekeeping seal is a such mark of distinction. So, I’m back GH, and I apologize for letting my affections wander.