The book has one of the highest concentrations I have ever seen of "salads" that are clearly desserts. The book has five different variations of "Cheese Salad."
They differ primarily in what proportion of the dairy fat should come from cream cheese v. whipped cream, which flavors of Jell-O work best, and whether the marshmallows should be measured by the piece or by the pound. (They all have the smallest proportion of pineapple allowed by law to call this a salad, though.)
Similarly, there are three different versions of this "salad."
Yep-- that cup of pineapple means all that brown sugar, butter, and lime Jell-O can masquerade as a salad.
Some salads make an effort to sound as if they're full of fruit.
Note that the only measured ingredients are the Jell-O, sugar, Dream Whip, and cream cheese. Plopping a single black cherry on top of each serving would still technically complete the recipe, and the salad would have just as much actual fruit as a hot fudge sundae.
And speaking of ice cream...
Yep, there's an ice cream salad too. Or you can just make an ice-cream-topping-type sauce and pretend it's a salad if you eat it on top of bananas.
If salads aren't enough to fill you up and dinner is just not the same without a little bread, then there's also the option of having a nice, sweet spread on that slice. I'm not talking about something like jam or jelly. Who wants fruit to water down all that sweet, sweet sugar?
Those with the most restraint can go for the "Maple" spread variety.
It has no actual maple (or even maple flavoring!), but only four cups of sugar.
Alternatively, the white sugar spread offers four cups of sugar in an equal amount of corn syrup:
I'm not sure why this labeled white sugar spread when it has just as much brown sugar in it, but at least it does have white sugar.
If you don't want to go to the trouble of heating up the stove, there's always another option:
Just stir brown sugar and a quart of marshmallow topping into a half-gallon of Karo syrup!
The fact that the main dish is so flavorless is way less of a problem if everything else on the table is so sweet that people at least occasionally have to take a bite of it to avoid fourth-degree sugar shock. Have a VERY sweet weekend to train your system for all the Halloween candy you're not actually going to give out!
Interesting how these all require modern refrigeration. The Amish in this area have a reputation for selling fruit pies that are basically all sugar goo with only a few bits of fruit, so I guess the tradition holds. They also run puppy mills, and given the 2 Amish men who were visibly trying to look up my skirt when I was waiting for a job interview some years ago, they still protect their sexual predators. I always laugh when people talk about buying meat from the Amish saying that it is ethically raised. That's certainly not true in this area!
ReplyDeleteI think sugar goo with occasional bits of fruit is the standard for most store-bought fruit pies, at least according to C's family.
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