Seven Layer Salad

I have a confession to make:  Some of the easiest recipes make me kind of panicky.  I'll tackle a cheesecake or making my own beef stock with pleasure, but tell me to make no-bake cookies and there's a part of me that wants to hide.  And why?  Because cheesecake is complicated, making your own beef stock impresses people because of the time commitment involved.  With more difficult recipes, there's a bit of wiggle room of forgiveness if you screw something up.  "Easy" recipes?  No such room for error.

So when my aunt Robin asked me to bring seven-layer salad to our family's Thanksgiving, I was relatively certain that I would be able to ace this challenge and then I panicked when I looked at other recipes online and didn't see one that looked like what my mom always made.  So of course I had to call her and after a little bit of coaching, I realized ... my family's standard seven-layer salad is actually more like a six-layer salad.  Somehow, that doesn't sound as enticing ...

Bacon.  Eggs.  Cheese.  Miracle Whip.  Peas.  Lettuce.  This is a non-healthy slice of heaven.

Mom's Seven (Erm, Six) Layer Salad

Hardboil four large eggs. 
Crisp one pound of bacon

Layer the following in the bottom of a 9 x 13 pan, shredded iceberg lettuce and one bag of frozen peas.  Top with Miracle Whip (I used most of a 30 oz. jar).  Sprinkle a bag of shredded cheddar cheese on the top of the Miracle Whip, crumble up the cooked bacon on top.  Quarter and place hard boiled eggs on the top. 

So what's so difficult about this salad?  What caused me a moment of sweaty palm panic?  It's pretty simple, actually ... do you know what a pain in the butt it is to spread Miracle Whip on top of frozen peas without pulling said peas up?  It's worth it though ... who knew that "salad" could be so unhealthy?

I'll even throw in a bonus picture ... since I didn't really know what I was doing when I made this salad, I hard boiled way too many eggs.  So I reached back even further to my nostalgia vault and made some deviled eggs.

My mama didn't use paprika, but I'm a rebel.

The filling for the deviled eggs is also pretty simple ... you combine the cooked yolks with a little mayo/Miracle Whip, mustard and pepper and then fill the egg white shells.  Because I think it's pretty, I sprinkled with a bit of paprika.