Photo by Luke Chen, The Daily Pennsylvanian.
If you were looking for cheap and healthful meals on campus in the 1970s, the place to eat was the basement of the Christian Association (CA), where its Eatery served up platefuls of whole wheat pizza, veggies and rice, and, according to Lee Joffe W’74, a salad with dressing so delicious that he still dreams about it decades later.
Recently, Lee wrote to us asking for help in finding recipes from the Eatery—specifically, that salad dressing. Here’s what he said:
Whenever I am back at Penn, it is always the absence of the Eatery that I miss most. I’ve always wondered if someone might have compiled some of the recipes or else perhaps reverse-engineered the recipes on his own. What I am most anxious to recover is how to make the Green Godfrey yogurt salad dressing. It was substantially just organic Bulgarian yogurt with herbs and spices and probably some finely diced cucumbers or other vegetables. Of course, most of the recipes would have been very basic hippie cuisine that would not be hard for an experienced cook to figure out … but I’ve never figured out the particular way that the CA made that dressing! There is a bottled Green Goddess dressing (I always thought the Green Godfrey name was a play on words from the bottled dressing), but it’s just not the same.
Can anyone help Lee out? Please comment below and share your memories of the Eatery, along with any recipes you have of its signature dishes.
I, too, would like to recreate that CA ranch dressing. I was a student from 1976-1980. I remember it as a hippie dippie ranch. I would guess cottage cheese and buttermilk and fresh herbs and dried spices. Anyone have a recipe?