Moldy Fun

A good friend recently gave me the special 30th anniversary edition of Tupperware's Homemade is Better (1981). Of course it finds a way to incorporate Tupperware containers into all the recipes, but some of my favorites are for the Tupperware mold.

The section on molded meat loaves initially freaked me out:

I saw raw meat going into a plastic Jel-N-Serve mold and knew that wouldn't be oven-safe, so my immediate thought was that this was for some kind of raw meat loaf for people who want to give their families food poisoning. Tell me that the image of a perfectly molded pink loaf doesn't make you think that for a second too.

That's only the first part of the recipe, though! The loaf is actually baked after coming out of the mold, and it looks as if the orange ham ring holds its shape pretty well:

It's kind of pretty in an abstract art way, although orange slices on a shiny pink meat slab don't seem inherently appetizing to me...

The real show-stopper, though, comes in the salad section:

And what is this sludgy pink concoction with radish roses on the side and a pimento tulip on top?

Why it is tomato soup mold, of course! Condensed tomato soup with gelatin, cottage cheese, mayonnaise, and assorted chopped veggies. Yum! It won't look much different coming up than it did going down (although the nice molded effect will be lost).

And as a special treat, I've included the bean salad aspic recipe just in case you have ever wondered about the best way to suspend canned beans and mushrooms in lemon Jell-O. (Well, second-best. The best way, of course, is not to do it at all.)