Tainted tomatoes, unhygienic jalapenos, and suspicious cilantro. What’s a salad lover to do while CDC sleuths search for the source of recent salmonella outbreaks?

Eat fruit salad.

Nothing goes better with a mixed plate of melon balls, peaches, plums, grapes, and whatever other fruit you care to add than the poppy seed dressing Sally Lowry introduced me to 10 years ago. Lowry’s parents, the late Burt and Eleanor Dedmon, owned the cutting stallions San Jo Lena (being groomed for his portrait), Playboys Remedy and Smokes Peppy San, as well as an impressive broodmare band, and I was at Valley Oak Ranch in East Texas to photograph horses in preparation for a dispersal.

Following the photo shoot, Sally invited me to lunch at a local restaurant. I can’t remember if we had fruit salad, but we talked about a shared love for cooking and she promised to send me a recipe for the “best poppy seed dressing in the world.” She was right. Nothing off a grocery self can match it.

Poppy Seed Dressing
   1 1/2 cups sugar
   2 teaspoons dry mustard
   2 teaspoons salt
   1/3 cup vinegar
   3 tablespoons grated or pureed onion
   2 cups vegetable oil (not olive oil)
   3 tablespoons poppy seeds

Mix sugar, mustard, salt and vinegar. Stir in onion puree. Slowly add oil and beat until thick (this works great in a food processor, but can be done with a mixer). Add poppy seeds and beat another minute or two. Store in the refrigerator.