GRANDMA MAC'S COTTAGE CHEESE SALAD

Steps:

• Dice all of the vegetables very small. Cut celery and carrots into matchstick size pieces and then small dice those. The bell pepper can be diced with a regular small dice and the same for the green onion. I don't recommend a food processor as this might liquify the soft vegetables and give you irregular size pieces of vegetable. .
• Set all diced vegetables aside after dicing by hand.
• Mix together the cottage cheese and mayonnaise in the bowl you intend to serve this dish inches Mix them thoroughly together.
• Next, add seasonings to cottage cheese/mayonnaise mixture and stir in thoroughly.
• Finally stir in all the chopped vegetables into the cottage cheese and mayonnaise mixture mixing everything thoroughly.
• Taste test the resulting salad after letting it sit for at least a couple hours to let the flavors settle and blend together. Then, after tasting, if you find that the amount of indicated seasoning isn't adequate to your preferences, whichever spice is lacking incrementally. The whole cottage cheese salad taste won't come out to its peak flavor until having sat in the refrigerator a while, even though it is actually good even without letting it sit.
• I recommend letting the salad rest four or more hours in the refrigerator (best if overnight) before you do a final re-adjust on any needed additional seasoning.
• Note: This is a very simple salad but very versatile, extremely tasty and quite popular whenever it has been made. It can double as either a salad on its own, or as a dip for raw vegetables or crackers. Start with a half cup of mayonnaise to begin with and use Best Foods or Hellman's not runny mayonnaise. And then increase mayo to taste if more is needed to make the salad rich and creamy. You don't want to overdo the mayonnaise though. And if you like a dry cottage cheese consistency, then get some cheese cloth and strain the whey off the cottage cheese before making the salad. It won't taste as nice as the original unstrained recipe in my opinion because you lose part of the cottage cheese flavor if it is strained too much. I use low fat cottage and not high fat because the high fat is more creamy and will make the salad more "liquidy". If you use high fat cottage cheese,that has more liquid cream in it, use a little less mayonnaise. Don't expect this salad to be the consistency of cream cheese as some might do who don't want it 'wet'. It is cottage cheese and the finished salad should have about the same consistency. Also be sure you shake all the water off the vegetables before adding them to the cottage cheese mixture . After the salad sits a long time, some whey will come to the top after flavors blend. That is normal. Enjoy.