The rainbow returns! Whether you like it or not!

Happy Pride Month! Or perhaps more appropriately this year, Scrappy Pride Month! It's unfortunately getting more important to remind everybody that we're here, we're queer, we deserve to be treated like real human beings because we are in fact real human beings, and also we like rainbows and kitsch. That last item, of course, is where my rainbow of gelatin comes in.

This year, I'm getting a sixth helping of recipes from River Road Recipes II: A Second Helping (The Junior League of Baton Rouge, Louisiana; January 1977 fourth printing). In case anyone isn't familiar with how a rainbow works: start with red. This year is too sour and bitter, so I'm going with (mostly) nice recipes this year, like Strawberry Delight Salad or Dessert.

I love that this Jell-O, like me, can go both ways. It also reminds readers that any gelatin, no matter how sweet, magically changes from dessert into a salad if you just serve it on a lettuce leaf.

Mandarin Orange Salad represents our violet layer. Yeah-- just kidding. The color is given away by the name. (Fun fact: In English, the color is named after the fruit. Before oranges were familiar, the color was just "red-yellow" or "yellow-red." In short, we have a fruit to thank for "orange"!)

To represent yellow, we've got Ginger Peach Salad for everyone who likes things a bit spicy.

This one also has plenty of soggy nuts, for those who are into that kind of thing. 

I'm going to hope the lime gelatin adds enough green that the Cheese Party Salad will count as green.

With three cheeses plus whipped topping, it's sure to be creamy and decadent. (I'd be a little afraid of the American cheese in the mix, though...)

And finally, as close as I can ever get to blue and/or violet with recipes predating Berry Blue Jell-O, Blueberry Salad.

I know the other side is always grousing about us "shoving things down [their] throats," showing an unawareness of both phrasing and how practically EVERY bit of culture has some implicit messages (and the haters are only consciously aware of the ones they personally disagree with). I just wish we could get the message down their throats as easily as Jell-O. 

In any case, it's Pride Month! And I hope all the jiggling in this post makes yours a little better. Gotta take what you can get...