Whoa Horsey Salad
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.
While I’m facing current challenges in my life as a result of a bad encounter with a horse (you can read more about that by clicking here), Mama has photographed up a few recipes for me to share with you. As you can see by the name of this recipe, Whoa Horsey Salad, she and I have the same sense of humor. Look for more horse themed titles in the near future from her and I fully expect some fun horse themed gifts under the Christmas tree this year!
There are several things I love about Whoa Horsey Salad. First of all, it tastes rich and sweet, but we actually make it with low sugar ingredients. However, you can go full sugar if you like. It is very much like a watergate salad, but with juicy bits of mandarin oranges and maraschino cherries, I like it a little better. 🙂
The main thing I love about this recipe right now, though, is that Mama brought me some of it when it was done 🙂
You’ll need: Crushed Pineapple in juice, Pineapple Tidbits in juice, mandarin oranges, 10-12 Maraschino cherries, small box sugar free instant pudding, 8 ounces cool whip*, and 1/2 cup chopped pecans (optional).
*A big container of cool whip is pictured but you only need the small one. Feel free to buy generic to save a little money.
Drain your fruit juices from the cans into a large bowl.
Add your pudding mix and whisk it up a bit until it is smooth.
Chop up your mandarin oranges and cherries a bit.
Mama drained her cherries some, to keep the salad from turning stark pink, but whether or not that is an important step to you is totally up to you.
It’s gonna taste awfully good either way!
Dump all of your fruit into the pudding mixture and stir that up really good.
Like this.
Add in your cool whip and stir really well until well incorporated.
Mama didn’t take a picture of it after it was stirred up good but hey, she works for free and fed me to boot, so I’m not about to look a gift horse in the mouth.
(heehee, get it? horse reference. I kill me 🙂 and I’m sure glad that horse didn’t!) Now, let’s east some Whoa Horsey Salad!
Cover and refrigerate several hours before serving.
Enjoy!
Ingredients
- 8 oz can crushed pineapple undrained
- 8 oz can pineapple tidbits undrained
- 11 oz can mandarin oranges undrained
- 10-12 maraschino cherries
- Small box instant vanilla pudding I use Sugar Free
- 8 oz Cool Whip
- 1/2 cup chopped pecans optional
Instructions
- Drain juice from pineapple tidbits and mandarin oranges into mixing bowl. Whisk in pudding mix until smooth.
- Cut mandarin oranges in half and chop maraschino cherries.
- Add all fruit and nuts to pudding mixture and stir gently to combine.
- Fold in Cool Whip.
- Refrigerate several hours before serving.
Note: I used fruits packed in 100% juice and sugar free pudding mix. Regular pudding mix and fruit packed in syrup can be substituted.
Nutrition
“Be miserable or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.”
~Wayne Dyer
I just made this for our 4th of July picnic. I used sugar-free pudding, pineapple and mandarin oranges in its own juice and fat free pudding. I did not have pecans so used some of my black walnuts. Turned out GREAT! Will make this again!
I am so glad you liked it Mary!!!!
I wonder if you could make it with using the cooked type of pudding & using the juices as the “liquid” (obviously, not milk). Hmmmmm?
I made this salad this week for my family who were here for my Mother’s funeral and it was a hit as usual. It is sooooo good!
You’ll like this story: My nephew’s 7 year old was saying the prayer of thanks at a meal the day after Halloween this week and he prayed: “Thank you God for this food, thank you for the candy and thank you that Grandma could go to see God. Ask Him to tell her ‘hi’ for me.”
How precious!! I am so sorry to hear about your Mom. I know she will be greatly missed and I will make sure to put you and all of your family on my prayer list.
I drained all the juices from the fruit in a bowl and then added in Sugar Free pistachio pudding, stirring till smooth, then added in my cut up mandarin oranges, pineapple tidbets, cut up marachino cherries, and pecans. added my 8 oz. lite cool whip and folded it all in together. It is delicious! U cakked ut watergate salad dessert, I won’t be here when my cleaning lady comes tomorrow but I left her a note to be sure to try that yummy dessert. I always make lunch for her so I just boiled eggs tonight for egg salad and will mix it up tomorrow morning and leave for her to make herself a sandwich.
Instructions are a bit confusing..using the word undrained. Do you drain the juice from crushed pineapple? Somebody clarify, please before I screw this dessert up!
You leave all the juice in the cans then drain it into a bowl in the first step. The “undrained” part in the ingredient list is to let you know you’ll be needing that so you don’t pour it down the sink. Hope this helps!:)