WHERE I COME FROM, the word “salad” means lettuce. Perhaps that lettuce will be accompanied by onions, tomatoes, peppers, cucumbers, crumbled cheese, or all of the above, but lettuce—and I believe I speak for all my homepeople when I say this—would be the foundation of all things “salad.” And, being a New Yorker, I went along thinking my way was the highway until fate stepped in and threw a man in my path some 21 years ago who, when he said “salad,” was speaking a different tongue. So we got married, and mixed things up.
The culinary has always been a great curiosity in my marriage. It still is, though never more so than at the beginning of the union. Leaving my safety/comfort zone for my first foray into my husband’s homeland and driving to Indiana many years ago, I was confronted at a Bob’s Big Boy with something known as white gravy. On biscuits. For breakfast. Where was the bagel with a schmeer, I wondered? Where, for that matter, were the delis? My father-in-law, accompanying us on this trip, sighed the sigh of gustable repatriation when the waitress plunked down the plate of biscuits and gravy. Having been east just long enough, it seemed, his sigh had all the satisfaction of a man who’d come home.
We were then driving west to memorialize Lillian, my mother-in-law, whose recipe boxes I’ve written about before. That would be the unforgettable Lillian of the Spam-Chop Suey recipe, and it was on my return trip that I’d be carrying with me that inherited recipe box, though not before my lexicon of cooking got a good shaking up.
Planning her memorial service, though painful, was lightened by the family patterns of grieving. There were prescribed ways to do things, and that helped. My father-in-law was a pastor, so is his brother, as are what seemed me to be an inordinate number of family members, so things went pretty much by the prayer book.
How could I help? At the reception following the service, I was asked to man the door and accept the food that would inevitably be delivered. Those bearing the meal would be what my Hoosier father-in-law termed the “widdaladies,” an endearment I untangled some hours later to mean, the “widow ladies.” I was told they’d bring salads.
How nice, I thought. How healthy. Though how many green salads could one party possibly need?
And then the doorbell rang and an indelible image, still seared into my brain, appeared: A lasagna pan of jiggling mini-marshmallows and mandarin oranges suspended in red Jell-O. Somewhere under it, no doubt, was a pair of feet in sensible shoes, though I have no memory of those, recalling only that a side-bowl of mayonnaise was thrust into my hands.
And the doorbell rings. Again, an enormous glass pan, this time green, in which was floating ham chunks and diced pineapple. Again I was handed the mayonnaise.
Two bowls of mayo held aloft, I floated into the crowd.
“What is this?” I think is what I asked my new husband.
“It’s salad, sweetheart,” he said in that comforting way people do when they mistake what you are feeling for something as normal as grief.
Really? Well, then I’m a peeled cucumber.
And the doorbell rings.
“No, no. Let me. Please,” I said, handing the mayo bowls to him.
An enormous platter was set before my eyes on which wiggled a veritable tower of orange Jell-O, pocked with cherries. I put my hand out for the mayo I now thought traveled with this dish like salt with pepper.
Nothing.
“Mayo?” I asked.
The woman viewed me suspiciously, and then the light of recognition went off. Oh, yes, it seemed to register, this is the New York daughter-in-law. I think she patted my hand.
“Where would you like this?” I asked.
“On the dessert table.”
I see. No mayo if it’s dessert. Mayo with entrée Jell-O only. I get it.
Doorbell. A layered, tri-color veritable rainbow of stacked wobbly gelatin stood before me. Oh thank God, I remember thinking. The gay community is here.
Nope: This is the palate-cleanser Jell-O, the in between entrée and dessert course. No, you might ask. There is no mayo with this. This comes with shredded carrots suspended in the tower, under it, and around the sides, providing not merely a jolting color combo, but some roughage.
A few days later we were en route home when I opened that recipe box for the first time, immediately flipping to the tab marked “Salads.” The key, I figured, the Rossetta Stone awaited me, until I discovered that the main ingredient in “Mandarin Orange Salad” was Lemon Jell-O; “Christmas Salad” necessitates lime Jell-O; “Strawberry Salad” needs black cherry Jell-O, and “Rhubarb Salad” calls for strawberry Jell-O.
Apparently my salad days were just beginning.
(Images from Shelf Life Taste Test’s fun Flickr stream.)
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Where I grew up, “salad” also involved lettuce. Unfortunately, the dinner table was also known to hold gelatinous side dishes such as tomato aspic (yuck!) or quivering jellied beef consomme (gag!). My 8-year-old self would prefer your salads to her tomato aspic any day!
Gratefully the Jello salad tendency skipped my generation. My Southern Momma knew of and indeed prepared your widdalady type salads however. Her favorite was some sort of thing that tasted tomatoey (there isn’t tomato jello – I still don’t know how she did that) and had pecans and celery floating in it with – yes! – a bowl of mayo on the side.
However I am a huge fan of biscuits and cream gravy and would suggest you make their acquaintance immediately if not sooner. [http://tiny.cc/l8Jmf ] Your taste buds don’t know what they are missing!
Being a born and bred Californian (Salinas Valley, the salad bowl of the world), salad meant lettuce to me too. But once I was served a Jello “salad” that had pretzels in it. A first for me!
The jello salad is the quintessential Hoosier funeral dish, my grandmother had a million of these receipes, the favorite being the lime jello with shredded carrots and lime jello with cottage cheese. Grandma also used these dishes for the weekly “pitch in” (that’s a potluck). She said that if one could make a nice jello salad it would go a long way in helping a spinster get a man. Apparently the ability to make good sausage gravy and biscuits didn’t hurt either. I made the lime and carrot “salad” a few months ago for my favorite Hoosier friend. He laughed his infectous laugh and had a generous portion (sans mayo). A lovely trip down memory lane!
I found this fascinating in an anthropological way. We certainly ate jello molds in western New York State where I am from, but they were an occasional side dish. Usually with whipped cream. Never with mayo. But then, we did have the butter lambs.
More recollections from the mourning customs of Hoosier farm country:
– Neighbor ladies (regardless of marital status) leave casseroles on your doorstep in the early morning, so the womenfolk in the grieving family don’t have to cook. This goes on for days. No one asks you to return the casserole dishes, even if they are blue-and-white Corningware. When you start remembering to return them (never empty, always with something inside, even something small), that is a signal to the community that the grieving family is returning to everyday life.
– The Jell-o salads are for the color, a deliberate but slightly seditious counterpoint to the dark Sunday suits and severity of the funeral ritual.
Ahhhh …. gustable coming home …. to Green Jello-O Salad … still ! My soon-to-be-88, L.A. raised mother met my father in Indiana, and perhaps learned (invented) the recipe there. I have never understood it to be regional, though it clearly brands my family as “unique”. A succession of college friends, girl friends and partners have expressed everything from wonder to amusment to horror upon sight, if not taste, of Green Jell-O Salad at a Garner picnic in upstate NY. Inspite of gasps and turned-up noses from the heathens, taste for and making of G J-O S has passed on to the next, and even the next generation of Garner-ish off-spring, it’s appearance still cause for high fives and much elbowing and jockey-ing for position around the serving table. This dish is inevitably the first to be finished, even when two or more varieties appear.
What is this Manna? Only Lime Jello-O with some amount of crushed pineapple and cottage cheese, perhaps with the occasional mini-marshmallow. The Jell-O is whipped, so
the entire effort is light and frothy, not a “quivering mass”.
Must be time for a visit home.
Not only a native New Yorker, but half Sicilian by birth, I have always considered Jell-O a lame “treat” for sick children or, possibly, an accessory to a terrible school lunch tray.
My first exposure to “Salad” was via my mother-in-law. Invited to New Year’s Day dinner at her lovely Arlington, VA, home, I was green with morning sickness (yes, even at 6 pm) when the platter was brought to the table. It was clearly meant to be part of the main course: Center stage, the molded opaque (how did she do it?) yellow creation sat, smelling of lemon and turning my stomach instantly.
Now, my MIL is no one to snub lightly. She is a Marine Corps general and, despite her feminine ways with a box of gelatin, a pretty formidable character. But there was just. No. Way. I was going to be able to eat the “Salad” — I could not even bring myself to taste it.
As the platter went around the table, all eyes were on me. Suffice to say, I indulged my own “delicate condition” and wordlessly declined the resilient and lemony confection. Family ties be damned, I chose avoiding a public puking session over politeness. And I still have not tasted Jell-O salad.
Susan Morse: The jello story by Marion is very funny! It brought back memories of my early years as a “housewife.” I had those special copper-colored jello molds in which I created every imaginable kind of salad with a jello base. Bananas were the one ingredient I always put in. My green salads in those days were just a hunk of iceberg lettuce covered with bottled French dressing. Today my grown-up children turn jello thumbs down because “it has horses’ hooves in it.” That may be fact or rumor; I’m not certain, but it has stopped all jello-eating. Does anyone remember junket? We often ate that for dessert in the 1940′s and ’50′s in Syracuse. It was pink.
I have to say, you haven’t lived until you’ve had lime jello with cream cheese in it. It was a special treat growing up. It might have had other (canned) fruit in it…fruit cocktail? pineapple? Can’t remember, but the lime & cream cheese combo (made in a blender) was the key.
My Italian grandmother came from a very poor upbringing during the depression when food was scarce and every morsel was savored. She would scold us if we did not, at the very least, have a little taste of each dish presented to us. But Jello with mayo?! I think even Grandma Zaccagnino would make an exception in that case.
That is so disgusting! Thank God I’m a New Yorker.
“There’s always room for Jell-O!”
That is what my dad used to say every time we had Jell-O for dessert, although regular family dessert was not a towering mold; it was just plain, fruit flavored Jell-O in little glass Pyrex dessert dishes.
But Dad, raised on a farm in northern Illinois during the Depression, had his own twist on Jell-O. You had to break it up slightly, sprinkle sugar over it and then pour milk on top of that. That was fine eatin’ back in the days of hungry.
I know – it sounds disgusting. It’s not. We’re onto the third generation of sugar-milk-Jell-O eaters now. My dad taught Rockboy and he’s passed it onto Skaterboy. (I’ll even admit to doing that every once in awhile, just for old time’s sake.)
Hello, hello! My, what a marvelous chord is struck when the topic is J-E-L-L-O!
Hello, Elizabeth. The very word “aspic” still makes me gag, even though they were all made by the beloved grandmother for whom I am named. Oh dear. Oh my. Oh yeah.
Hiya TexasDeb. I experienced immediate conversion after my first biscuit and gravy experience. I have since chowed down big time in every drive to and from Indiana, begging to stop at every Bob’s Big Boy I spied. Hmmm. I feel a sudden need for a roadtrip!
Hi, Deb: And welcome. I think Paige has that Jell-O and pretzels here on her post. Check it out. And please come back soon.
Darcy: What, I must ask, are the other “quintessential Hoosier Funeral ” dishes? I’m, ah, dying to know. Please provide asap. Thanks tons for “pitch-in,” my new favorite regional phrase. Hope to read you here again soon.
Hi Sandy. Butter lambs? Just how big are butter lambs?
Oh my. Do please come back and tell us.
Hello, Petra. Welcome. How fascinating. I do remember the distinctive “plunk” of casserole dishes on our front stoop the morning after my father died. But the thought was long gone until you reminded me. I adore the designation of the return of the dishes marking the return to life, and that the Jell-O salads are for adding color to the otherwise bleak event. How marvelous. Thank you.
Hi there, Anthony. Elbowing and jockeying for green Jell-O salad has got to be the one true response, yes? Oh, I love that image. I think it’s time you made a trip home and reported back on what you are served. Thanks for stopping by.
Hiya, Jaya. What a hold-out you are. Wow. I admire your resolve, I do. I lack it, utterly, though, and can report that I’ve tasted even the most repulsive-looking of the salads, almost always coming away changed by the experience.
Hi, Susan: And welcome to TSP. Of course I remember Junket. We loved it! (My sister will now report that she’s never eaten it; ah, family). Thanks for the culinary memory lane reminder. Please come back soon for more.
Hi, Christine. Oooh. Aren’t you the brave one. Okay, I’m in. I’ll try it. I suspect I’ll be served it at my next Indiana experience, though. I’ll let you know.
Hello, Stephanie, and welcome to TSP. Ah, a true New Yorker. Yes, I know. I wonder what Grandma Zaccagnino’s recipe file looks like. Do you know? We’d love to hear about it on our vintage recipe files string. Thanks for coming by. Please come back soon.
Hello, Roadchick. And welcome back. I’ve seen this done, needless to say, in Indiana. But it was heavy cream. Oh yeah. Just drenched in both sugar and heavy cream. Oh my. Third generation Jell-O eaters are experts. So now we know what the ultimate Jell-O experience really is. Thanks for sharing it. And come back soon.
Here is a defining question:
When the Housewives of the 50′s and 60′s locked the kids out of the house all day until meal time, what the heck were they doing in there?!? It certainly wasn’t learning to cook! I guess they just wanted to be sure we were starving enough to eat whatever they put on the table.
My mother could never figure out why I was so skinny. Hello! After running around the neighborhood all day, I got a bologna or grilled Velveeta sandwich. Dinner? Jello from a box, casseroles made with Campbell’s cream of mushroom, and everything else — from asparagus to peaches to “chop suey” — straight out of the can.
Now, after working all day, we’re expected to artistically present locally grown, organic, just picked, grass-fed, free-range ingredients to kids who have been inside watching Celebrity Chef.
Let’s go back to our mother’s ways and rid the country of childhood obesity epidemic.
Marion, I loved this piece. You have such a great way of looking at the world. I’m going to take this in a whole different direction. Your “salad days” reminded me of a guy I dated years ago who always talked about his “salad days.” How they were over, what he did in his salad days, how he couldn’t do that now because his salad days were over. I used to think and still do; what are salad days? How long do they last? How do you know when they’re over? Why?
Hello, Debra. I genuinely think you may be on to something. What a concept. Yeah, me too: skinny as a rail as a kid, though we were retrieving olives out of warming cocktail glasses and calling them vegetables. (They are vegetables, aren’t they?) I love this idea of the expectations placed on us now. You are spot on, sister. Yes. Let’s do go back.
Hi, Hollis. And welcome back to TSP. Thanks for the kind words. My sister, of course, would say my way of looking at the world is totally screwball, but that’s family for you, you know? These are all good questions, and speak to you being the far more insightful one in that relationship. Not surprisingly. My word and phrase encyclopedia says, ” Cleopatra, kidded by Charmian about her old love for Julius Caesar, joked that those were her ’salad days,’ when she was ‘green in judgment, cold in blood.’ In other words she loved Caesar unskillfully and without much passion compared to the way she loved mark Anthony. Thus our expression for naive and inexperienced comes to us from Shakespeare’s Anthony and Cleopatra.” And now we know.
Butter lambs are pats of butter that have been pressed into molds to look like little lambs. They are an Easter tradition in the Buffalo, NY area.
Lettuce has a reputation for cooling the passions, so no wonder Cleopatra characterized her lack of passion for Caesar with those words.
Hi, Sandy. That’s marvelous. I love that. I wonder where else these are traditional Easter fare. Thanks for sharing this culinary tradition, and please come back soon.
Hello, knittingrid. Welcome to TSP. How absolutely marvelous of you to share that. Who knew? Who did, indeed. This is why I keep a bazillion reference books around me as I type. And while I loved the Cleopatra discovery prompted by the comment by Hollis, I also love how you heightened and added to that reference. We live–and, if we are very lucky–we learn. Please come back soon for more.
Susan Morse
Regarding Horse Hooves – I hope it’s true because I swore off Jello and gelatin (the main ingredient of the dreaded aspic) myself at about age 11 upon hearing the horse hoof story. And, I’ll confess when my own daughter asked for Jello one day at about age 10 I hissed at her in the supermarket aisle “It’s made of horse hooves!” ensuring I’ll never have to make Jello — dessert, salad, or otherwise.
Gelatin is made from collagen, which in commercial use comes from bones and connective tissue. I am no one’s idea of a vegetarian, but I do eschew gelatin in all my daily vitamins. These days you can choose cellulose or fish gelatin as the needed alternative, if you read labels. If, like me, you tend to shop without your reading glasses (d’oh!), simply look for “vegetarian” (always in large print) on the label, since most vitamins utilize gelatin to bind them together. Yes, of course, it’s in all gelatin desserts, as well as many other processed products. I make the exception for the occasional Jell-O tower, but avoid it in any regular use. Now you know.
Marion, you should take a road trip to LeRoy NY for a visit to the JELLO museum. It is west of Rochester exit 47 off the thruway. It was fun learning about the history of this American classic.
I miss JELLO 123 all those magic layers of JELLO.
This is all hysterical. I love the idea that we all have such an emotional response to FOOD!
Butter lambs made it to Central NY, too. They’ve been on the Easter dinner table for as long as I can remember – regardless of who was hosting dinner. I can never be sure whether you should lop off the nose or the butt first…
Growing up, jello most often arrived on your plate after you’d had the stomach bug. It was on Mom’s list of approved foods for recovering stomachs. So here I am, a mother of 3, and do you know that every time I’ve tried to make Jello I screw it up? HOW on EARTH am I screwing up Jello? Who knows. But it makes me laugh every time. And since I’m usually making it because someone has been sick all night…I’m grateful for the laugh!
When we were growing up, we always had dessert immediately after dinner. Toward the end of the meal usually my brother would ask what dessert was and once a week my Mom would say “Health Salad”. This was jello, (whatever color that week) with apple, orange, banana and pineapple slices, and some grapes in it. It was an okay salad but I always felt a little jello compromised with all the fruit. So I started making plain jello on other days and I would take my portion and put it in the back of the refrigerator. I would leave it there for 4-5 days until it was really firm, almost chewable . SO FABULOUS! Marion, thanks so much for tapping into these memories. I’m gonna make some jello. Ann
Hi, Jim. This is actually on the life list of road trips we intend to take. My husband–having grown up believing Jell-O is a food group–put it there. Me, I would once not have thought it a necessary visit, but but now I do. Thanks for the reminder. And please come back soon.
Hi, Jean. I know. It is highly emotional, isn’t it, though does that mean we are complicated creatures, or the simplest of beings? Oh dear. I have no idea. That you screw up Jell-O is a delightful detail. Never change, sister. Never. It’s wonderful to ponder. Thanks for telling us, and thanks for stopping by. We hope to see you here again soon.
Hi, Ann: Chewable? OHMYGOD. I love this detail. Hilarious. But health salad? I’m practically hyperventilating I’m laughing so hard. Marvelous. Thank you. Please come back soon.
An hour west of me is Leroy, NY – Home of The JELL-O Museum and ajoining “Jello Brick Road”. My MIL had aspic/jello molds that ’80′s Madonna would have loved to wear! My mother is required to make her Lime with Cherries Christmas masterpiece every holiday. The one year we all missed it was the year dear brother left it on the car roof. Mom received a replacement bowl for her birthday. Gotta go – searching for a quick setting Jell-O salad recipe.
Hi, Nancy.
And welcome to TSP, where we love us some Jell-O salad. Does your mother share her recipe? Oh, how we hope she does, and that she will, with us. “Cherries Christmas Along the Roadside,” would make a great country song, don’t you think? Please come back soon for more.
Marion, I have told your jello story several times and laughed to see it today.
Hi, Sherry, and welcome to TSP. I am so glad to see you here, and so glad that you remember the story and have re-read it here on the site. Please come back for more.
Just found this Jell-O thread — my Irish mom chose Jell-O for her creative energies – she rarely experimented in the kitchen otherwise. But she was the Long Island Jell-O queen: quick-setting Jell-O (ice cubes),opaque frosty Jell-O (electric mixer when semi-set), fruit mixed into Jell-O (never bananas-they turn black). Always served from the bowl it was mixed in, or inverted into a bowl-shaped mound for company. Redi-whip or heavy cream on the side. Vegetables must NEVER, ever touch Jell-O! I’ve had to eat it recently for digestive reasons – I close my eyes and – wow! disdain it all over again, just like freshman year in college.
The Long Island Jell-O Queen? Katie: Do tell us more. We love this name, this idea, and the details you’ve provided here. Welcome to TSP, where few things make us as happy as Jello-O stories. Please read around the site, sister, and add your comments. We love having you here.