Sketchy Cookbooks and Recipes - or, What Can I Add Into This Fish Shaped Jell-O Mold

[GentlemanFaggot]

Friends, this Christmas eve I bring you great tidings. Tidings of jello salad. I had an early Xmas celebration with my parents, grandma, and step-grandpa (who we'll call Fat Bastard) so I brought my soon-to-be-famous Cheery Cherry Jello Salad over. You see, Fat Bastard doesn't like cherry. No one likes Fat Bastard, so the flavor choice was obvious.

Spoiler: Salad Overview

At the point this photo was taken, my cute little swirls of Reddi-Whip had melted into cum puddles but considering the nature of this thread, it might just add to the visual experience.
View attachment 622110
Beautiful.

So how do you make this?

Boil 2 cups of water and add in a packet of jello (in this case, black cherry). Mix it up until it starts to look and smell like cough syrup. Take 6 ounces of softened cream cheese and use a mixer until it looks kind of smooth. It should look like Pepto-Bismol at this stage. If you, like me, forgot to soften the cream cheese you should have a cottage cheese-like texture. Add in 2 cups of Seven Up and let the mix chill out in the fridge for an hour and a half. Mix in 2 cups of Cool Whip. You can also add 8 ounces of crushed pineapple chunks but I didn't because fuck pineapples. Put that in the fridge 4 hours or overnight to set. When you serve, add some cute dollops of Reddi-Whip and cherries (if you can find any)
View attachment 622111
Beautiful serving of Christmas jello. Smells a little like Pepto-Bismol. But the most important question is how does it taste?
It was fuckin' delicious. It's very mousse-like, it's light and fluffy and the flavor was very much like cherry 7-up.
I would have eaten more servings if I wasn't already stuffed with beans and pork. My dad and grandma agreed that it was tasty. My mom HATED the texture but thought that the flavor was nice. Fat Bastard wouldn't even touch it. Fuck you Fat Bastard. My jello salad doesn't like you either.

We've got enough leftover to finish tomorrow for Christmas Dinner, so I'm going to hold off on the second recipe until New Year's. Stay tuned for jello part 2.

Did Aunt Myrna like it?

 

[omori]

My mom makes a really fantastic Watergate Salad which is probably one of the best pieces if cuisine to come out of that era.

 

[Pumpkin spice]

Googled this dish because I couldn't figure out what it was, and this picture is actually one of the better versions. It's poched eggs in wine sauce, but it usually just looks an abortion. View attachment 602876 http://butterme-up.blogspot.com/2010/12/oeufs-en-meurette-poached-eggs-in-red.html

you could tell me this is a photo of medical waste and I'd believe you.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

Oh lordy it is time for another jello adventure, this time with exciting progress photos! Today it's a lime pear jello salad, from this blog: https://ashleemarie.com/lime-dinner-jello/
There are a few perplexing spelling errors that left me wondering how the fuck you mi.lk ice and why there were "chucks" in it, but without further adoo- lime pear jello!

Spoiler: The Green Menace

First off we mix our hot pear juice, jello, and ice cubes and stir "until the ice m.ilk". A better description would be "until it looks like cartoonish toxic sludge".

Next we mix up our pears and cream cheese until it looks like-
Oh

Oh

With our cream cheese mixed in with the jello, we then mix up some whipped cream to mix in. Or at least we would be doing that, but I used it all shrouding my pumpkin pie the other day. So time to make a shitty milk version version of the homemade whip. Spoiler alert, it doesn't whip OR nae nae.

Time to get it into the pan! I am really going to have to eat all of that, aren't I?

Alright, let's dig in.

The last jello was fuckin tasty. This is fuckin weird. With a real whipped cream addition it would be far better than what I bootlegged, but the pears are bringing this to Texturetown in the worst way.
Overall I'm rating this a 3.5 out of 5 :horrifying: ratings.

 

[Slowboat to China]

Semper fi, @MerriedxReldnahc. That is not territory I'd be wanting to explore, so God bless you for trailblazing for your fellow Kiwis. Try one of the meat ones next time?

BTW, the Lileks site/books (mentioned upthread) talked about the genesis of the weird molded salads and the strange shit the 50s and 60s did with canned food, especially seafood. He pointed out that back in ye olden dayes, it wasn't as easy to get, say, fresh tuna or crab in Ohio or North Dakota, and a lot of these recipes evolved out of a combined need to push a given product (The Better Mayonnaise Cookbook wanting mayo in every course of the meal) and to mainly use canned or shelf-stable food rather than fresh, because you might not be able to get X ingredient fresh in certain parts of the country.

Green bean casserole, now a Thanksgiving staple, was invented by the Campbell's soup company to push their cream of mushroom soup. It's a pretty interesting look at the world of the corporate cookbooks, actually; the gal who invented it just died. https://www.usatoday.com/story/mone...reen-bean-casserole-dies-campbell/1753395002/

 

[MadDamon]

My mom used to make me soup made of crocodile meat and dried gecko that said could cure asthma.
I haven't suffer from an asthma attack since my late teen. Maybe the soup really help.

 

[Francis E. Dec Esc.]

My mother used to make a 'Mexican salad' that was nothing but iceberg lettuce, black olives, Fritos, canned beans, and Catalina dressing. It was wretched.

 

[Botched Tit Job]

I picked up a vintage Tupperware jello ring mold at a Goodwill a few months back. I told myself I was going to try some absurd jello concoctions from my grandmother's recipe box, but haven't had the balls to yet.

The world is just too sad right now to bring another disgusting creation into it.

 

[GentlemanFaggot]

Semper fi, @MerriedxReldnahc. That is not territory I'd be wanting to explore, so God bless you for trailblazing for your fellow Kiwis. Try one of the meat ones next time?

At least the dessert ones can be edible, but I can't imagine the savory meat (Or god help us, fish) ones palatable, let alone edible, at all.

So this means, yes, please make one!

 

[Pepperhill]

My gran used to make a marvellous dessert for special occasions. Orange flavour jelly (jello?) whipped up with condensed milk and chilled to a kind of solid beige froth. She'd decorate it with mandarin orange segments (from a tin) and blobs of faux cream. She called it, quite grandly, Orange Cream. We called it fluffy jelly. We loved it, and would ask her to make it for birthdays. We had low expectations.

I tried to recreate it a couple of times for my kids, but I don't know how she got the stuff to stay homogenised. Mine always separated into distinct layers of mostly-jelly and mostly-condensed-milk. Not horrible, but not the same as grandma used to make.

 

[dunbrine47]

https://onemileatatime.com/united-polaris-cookbook/

A cookbook based on airplane food.

A follow up post where he actually cooks this:
https://onemileatatime.com/polaris-cooking-experience/

 

[Dysnomia]

My mom makes a really fantastic Watergate Salad which is probably one of the best pieces if cuisine to come out of that era.

I looked it up and it sounds really good. Probably because those ingredients actually go together. It's not green jello mold with a bunch of weird stuff inside.

My grandmother had cookbooks in Polish and I was always curious about what was in them. But I can't read it. Probably a lot of cabbage, potatoes and stuff like that. But I always wondered if there was something really weird in there.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

I've been seeing the calls for a meat jello but I love my family too much to subject them to that- however I do have a early 60's Bisquick cookbook with some really scary concoctions. While I have something planned for next week that is going to be weird in all kinds of ways, I decided to start with something less scary.

They're like cinnimon rolls, but meat!

Spoiler: Beefy Time

So lets gather our ingredients. I don't make meat-in-a-can dishes basically ever, so I was suprised to notice that the #1 in America Mystery Meat is a product of the great nation of Uruguay.

So while heating your soup (I did it in a seperate saucepan and not the glass dish like the recipe says) you get your biscuit dough rolled out and slather on your corned beef. I think the Uruguayan factory workers might have made a mistake and accidently filled the container with Fancy Feast.

Time to roll this bad baby up and get it in the pan with our soup. I had a little trouble getting all my rolls in, so it looks a bit like a earthquake hit the pan. Or a swamp flood.

Oh boy. Let's get baking.
Sure looks better coming out, and it smelled good to.

Got some herb cheese and mustard out, let's see how this turned out.

It doesn't look too pretty, but it wasn't all that bad. The biscuit part was suprisingly light and fluffy. I'm a biscuit lover who turns up my nose at the idea of *gasp* boxed mixes so I was pleasently suprised I wasn't offended. (I did also add a bit more cream than the recipe called for). The meat is a little funky, maybe that was the "zippy" element the recipe described. The mustard and cheese paired well and covered up most of the cat food flavor.
So overall, a little funky but not bad. My family agreed, everyone went back for seconds. Probably a good lunch to serve to your 80 year old grandmother.

*EDIT* Be careful making this if you have a sensitivity or allergy to sulfates, one of my taste testers is having an allergic reaction.

 

[XYZpdq]

I've been seeing the calls for a meat jello but I love my family too much to subject them to that- however I do have a early 60's Bisquick cookbook with some really scary concoctions. While I have something planned for next week that is going to be weird in all kinds of ways, I decided to start with something less scary.
View attachment 638518
They're like cinnimon rolls, but meat!

Spoiler: Beefy Time

So lets gather our ingredients. I don't make meat-in-a-can dishes basically ever, so I was suprised to notice that the #1 in America Mystery Meat is a product of the great nation of Uruguay.
View attachment 638525
So while heating your soup (I did it in a seperate saucepan and not the glass dish like the recipe says) you get your biscuit dough rolled out and slather on your corned beef. I think the Uruguayan factory workers might have made a mistake and accidently filled the container with Fancy Feast.
View attachment 638528
Time to roll this bad baby up and get it in the pan with our soup. I had a little trouble getting all my rolls in, so it looks a bit like a earthquake hit the pan. Or a swamp flood.
View attachment 638527
Oh boy. Let's get baking.
Sure looks better coming out, and it smelled good to.
View attachment 638524
Got some herb cheese and mustard out, let's see how this turned out.
View attachment 638526
It doesn't look too pretty, but it wasn't all that bad. The biscuit part was suprisingly light and fluffy. I'm a biscuit lover who turns up my nose at the idea of *gasp* boxed mixes so I was pleasently suprised I wasn't offended. (I did also add a bit more cream than the recipe called for). The meat is a little funky, maybe that was the "zippy" element the recipe described. The mustard and cheese paired well and covered up most of the cat food flavor.
So overall, a little funky but not bad. My family agreed, everyone went back for seconds. Probably a good lunch to serve to your 80 year old grandmother.

*EDIT* Be careful making this if you have a sensitivity or allergy to sulfates, one of my taste testers is having an allergic reaction.

Doing that with better stuff would probably be pretty great. Like a bbq pulled pork or something.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

I just learned that Salvador Dali made a surrealist cookbook, which has been reissued as of a few years ago.
https://www.artfido.com/an-eccentri...tkWBIEaDIIQ8Eix2kHOW6oBDUWVpBvyJmOeoFiVQSrJ-Y
As much as I want to get it and see what sort of weird things I can create, it's freaking expensive.
https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/3836508761/artfido0f-20

 

[Francis E. Dec Esc.]

 

[XYZpdq]

View attachment 650657

Reminds me of how some Spanish speakers do stuff with bananas and plantains like that.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

So I decided to make another recipe from the old Bisquick cookbook, this time a more "exciting" dish. Nothing says tasty like canned meat with a fuckton of cloves slathered in apricot jam.

Spoiler: Dixie Bake

First things first we need to adorn our Spam with a ton of cloves. I used the low sodium kind because I like when my heart functions and my dad doesn't need any more kidney stones.

Now we awkwardly squeeze in some biscuits...

Now we mix up the jam, mustard powder, and water and slather that on to our processed meat product.
That looks....beautiful.

Ok, something clearly went wrong because this actually looks tasty. I knew at least half of it would be fine because biscuits and jam are pretty normal. But Spam? It's got to be weird right?

Well apparently Spam n' Jam is delicious. The cloves weren't as overpowering as I expected. Spam has that unmistakably Spammy texture so if you aren't a Spam lover this might be funky, but it tastes like meat designed for human consumption- as opposed to the corned beef which seemed more fit for my cats. You throw some butter on the biscuits and they're even better.
I'm glad it turned out well, but I wish I had a weirder result to share with you all! I'm going to have to create some funky jello recipes to balance it out.

 

[XYZpdq]

So I decided to make another recipe from the old Bisquick cookbook, this time a more "exciting" dish. Nothing says tasty like canned meat with a fuckton of cloves slathered in apricot jam.
View attachment 653242

Spoiler: Dixie Bake

First things first we need to adorn our Spam with a ton of cloves. I used the low sodium kind because I like when my heart functions and my dad doesn't need any more kidney stones.
View attachment 653247
Now we awkwardly squeeze in some biscuits...
View attachment 653251
Now we mix up the jam, mustard powder, and water and slather that on to our processed meat product.
That looks....beautiful.
View attachment 653248
Ok, something clearly went wrong because this actually looks tasty. I knew at least half of it would be fine because biscuits and jam are pretty normal. But Spam? It's got to be weird right?
View attachment 653250
Well apparently Spam n' Jam is delicious. The cloves weren't as overpowering as I expected. Spam has that unmistakably Spammy texture so if you aren't a Spam lover this might be funky, but it tastes like meat designed for human consumption- as opposed to the corned beef which seemed more fit for my cats. You throw some butter on the biscuits and they're even better.
I'm glad it turned out well, but I wish I had a weirder result to share with you all! I'm going to have to create some funky jello recipes to balance it out.

This doesn't sound bad, just sorta ghetto kitbash glazed ham.

 

[MerriedxReldnahc]

Thread Necromancy ahoy!
Today I was searching the vast toilet of the internet for a recipe to use up the rest of my buttermilk and found a solution that I don't hate myself enough to try, but thought was worth sharing.

https://snapguide.com/guides/make-reunion-salad-easy-delicious/

It's called Reunion Salad (maybe you bring it to your high school reunion to guarentee that people you hate will never contact you again?).
It's a mix of cool whip, vanilla pudding mix, buttermilk, a can of pineapple chunks and mandarin oranges (both drained), and almost an entire package of crushed fudge stripes cookies. You have to save a few to decorate the top and make it look pretty. There are plenty of great photos in that link (interspersed with ads, it seems like every picture of this salad was preceded by a picture of a dirty toilet and promises of how fast I could clean it), but here is the finished product.

I feel a bit better seeing that they're off-brand fudge stripes and not the Keebler ones, 'cause I love those cookies and hate to see them put to such use.