Holiday dessert or salad? edition

Now it's time for a holiday edition of the long-running "Dessert or salad?" debate. Three Y's Mice on Cooking (Young Women's Christian Association, Bristol Tennessee-Virginia, ca. mid-1970s) weighs in with this carefully named "Festive Pink Holiday Treat."

It's not labeled as a salad OR as a dessert because Mrs. Leona Teagarden agrees with Alice Lonabarger (even though Ms. Lonabarger was not so careful with the recipe name): Serve on a lettuce leaf for salad or just on a plate by itself for dessert. This recipe does not require any changes in sugar levels (either down or up) to make it into a dessert. That makes this the second vote for the lettuce-leaf-is-the-only-difference school of thought, which is nice to know when the holidays are involved and one might be more tempted than ever to consider a sugary treat to be a salad so there's more room for Christmas cookies and yule log cake at dessert time. 

If you pay attention, the recipes don't even specify that anyone has to actually eat the lettuce leaf for the sugary gelatin to be a salad-- it should just be served on one. If you hate lettuce in your strawberry Jell-O, you can still call it salad and get off on a technicality if you leave the lettuce leaf on the plate. The holidays are a magical time.