My initial post about Celebration Cook Book (American Association of University Women, West Chester, PA, 1976) "celebrated" its commitment to forcing readers to think critically (because the instructions were often so impenetrable that a lot of interpretation was in order). I've got to give the book credit for another thing, though. Its gelatin-based salads are pretty amazing, even to someone who is kind of inured to Jell-O salads by now.
Sure, I've seen Jell-O salads with tomato soup, or shrimp, or tomato soup and shrimp, but they generally make some effort to look attractive, no matter how they might taste. The gelatin is a neutral color (plain or lemon), or it will match the other ingredients. (The only example of a lime-based gelatin shrimp salad I linked to above features avocado, not tomato, so the green will match the green.) This shrimp mold, on the other hand...
I can only imagine the muddy color it will turn when the lime Jell-O and the can of tomato soup get all mixed up. At least this one will present a visual warning that it's terrible, not just an olfactory one!
I initially thought the Sauterne Ring Mold might be a relatively good one-- lemon Jell-O, a sweet, dessert-y wine. Then it took a hard turn.
Who wants onion, deviled eggs, and artichoke hearts in their sauterne? (And who suspends entire halves of deviled eggs in a Jell-O mold?) This one kind of broke my mind.
The molded salads aren't all terrible, though. Grandma Ericson's Sunshine Salad actually sounds pretty fun!
I love how they have you make the full batch of jello, then slowly titer it into the mold to harden. You better make this in the summer when it is blazing hot and you don't have air conditioning to keep the remaining jello liquid. Sure, you could re-heat the jello to liquify it again, but where is the fun in that? I also wonder what an upside down deviled egg congealed in jello would look. I wonder how much the grated onion debris would cover the eggs.
ReplyDeleteGrandma Erickson sounds fun. I bet she encouraged kids to play with their food.
They used to love dividing Jell-O up and thickening it in stages. It helped keep things in place (instead of just sinking or floating, depending on the add-in). Maybe working with all those Jell-O stages was also a very sad form of entertainment for bored housewives? It's more exciting than watching paint dry, I imagine.
DeleteYes, I know that they had to harden it in stages to place things just so. I also know that at one time Midwestern church ladies also had contests to see who could make the thinnest, most even layers of jello in a dish. 1/8 inch seems to be about the thinnest they could go. I also heard that they tasted awful because each layer was a different flavor to get the nice rainbow effect. I guess jello is way more entertaining than I realized. Or maybe my life is just more interesting.
DeleteWell, tbh, making Jell-O layers sounds more fun than drinking tea and tatting to me.
DeleteLoL, I got a set of spangled bobbins and several balls of thread at the lace guild meeting yesterday. Granted those items are more for bobbin lace. I also had coffee at the meeting yesterday because I was dead tired after spending the last two weeks moving. Anyway, my point is that I do mix it up sometimes :)
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