Judy Garland's Favorite Vegetable Salad Was Full Of Crunch
Considering Jennifer Aniston's rumored favorite salad (the one that she allegedly ate for lunch every day while filming "Friends") went viral on TikTok last year, it's safe to say that peering into some actresses' lunchboxes may result in a tasty payoff. If you want to eat like Judy Garland, star of "The Wizard of Oz" and famous actress during Hollywood's golden era, you can still find the exact recipe for her favorite salad. Affectionately dubbed the "Over the Rainbow Salad" by The Roanoker, it features an array of fresh, colorful produce.
While the recipe originally came from Garland's mom, it was first published in the cookbook "What Actors Eat — When They Eat." This came out in 1939, when Garland was only a teenager and right around the time she took on her starring tole as Dorothy in her ruby slippers. The recipe includes lettuce hearts, cubed celery, watercress, grated carrots, sliced tomatoes, seeded olives, green peas, and chopped endive. The dressing is a mixture of olive oil, vinegar, salt, paprika, garlic, and sugar. All of this comes together to make a dish that is light, vibrant, crunchy, and packed full of nutritious ingredients.
Garland liked to mix her salad with her hands
Some of Garland's other favorite foods included steak and kidney pie, mashed potatoes, and Coca-Cola — certainly not most salads, which makes her love for her mom's recipe extra-special. "I like nice, crispy vegetable salad," she wrote in "What Actors Eat — When They Eat" (via Old Soul Retro). "But I didn't always like it. Then one day my mother discovered just the right combination, just the right dressing, and now it is my favorite type of food." Garland noted that since the salad was so simple to put together, if her mom wasn't available, she would just make it herself. Considering the actress grew up with two working parents in Grand Rapids, Minnesota (and later California, where the family moved), she was able to develop a few techniques of her own if her parents weren't around.
To make the dressing, all you have to do is shake the ingredients together in a bottle, which Garland recommended doing three times. Then she advised mixing everything together with your hands, so that you can feel for the parts of the salad where the dressing hasn't reached. Even if you're still on the fence about this recipe or not a big salad fan in general, Garland insisted it deserves it a shot. "This one is different, honest," she said.