A Jiggly Rainbow for June

Happy Pride Month! As your favorite bi blogger about old cookbooks (assuming that the number of bi bloggers about old cookbooks is even smaller than the number of people willing to eat pickles in orange Jell-O), I thought I'd celebrate with a rainbow of gelatin salads from The Thrifty Cook: Tasty Budget Recipes (food editors of Farm Journal, edited by Nell B. Nichols, 1974).

First up is red, in this case represented by Cranberry/Apple Salad, a good choice for "a co-operative dinner" and loaded with cranberry juice, cherry gelatin, apples, and celery.

Not a bad start. Now on to orange:

I will readily admit to a certain fondness for the gelatin/ pineapple/ carrot salad often called sunshine salad (especially if the vinegar is omitted), but carrots and cabbage gelled into a block of orange gelatin, orange juice, and pickle juice (along with some minced onions, celery, and pickles for good measure) does not sound nearly as appealing.

With yellow, we're back to something that is probably at least reasonably tasty:

Ginger, pineapple, lemon, and apple sounds fine, and the book helpfully notes that if you're worried about wasting the rest of the 12-oz. can of ginger ale, "you can salvage the leftover beverage by adding it to a fruit cup or pouring it over canned pears."

Things get questionable again when we get to green:

Poor lime Jell-O always gets the mayonnaise, cucumber, celery, cottage cheese, and green pepper glopped into it.

I'll admit that I had some trouble with blue. There is no blue gelatin salad in the book, and Berry Blue Jell-O didn't exist until the '90s, so I am cheating and adding the blue layer of the "Old Glory" Blox from The Knox Gelatine Cookbook (1977).

If you point out that blueberries aren't really blue-- they're purple, especially after they've been cooked, I will just tell you straight up that you're going to have a problem with my purple pick too. Just use the blueberry Old Glory Blox as purple and forget about blue if you're going to be picky about it.

I guess I already spoiled it that I couldn't find a real purple either, but the magenta hue of beets is purple-adjacent, so here's my thrifty choice to complete our pride month rainbow of gelatin "treats":

Yes, it's a "lively" salad of beets, vinegar, lemon gelatin, celery, horseradish, and onion, full of sharp flavors and a bright hue to "rescue meals that would otherwise be colorless."

I'm not sure anyone would want to eat all of these molded salads, but maybe they'd be a good addition to a live Jell-O wrestling float in the pride parade! One can always dream.... Happy Pride Month!