Short answer: not really

Well, yesterday, my post was dedicated to pudding. Today, we take on an adjacent foodstuff: Jell-o salad.

One of my mother's festive specialties was the Jell-o mold.

Early on in my childhood, for Thanksgiving, she regularly made a Waldorf Salad that contained apples, celery, and walnuts suspended in a lovely golden apple-flavored Jell-o. Even though the walnuts got a little soggy, I loved it. Then Jell-o went and stopped producing apple Jell-o. Hiss, boo. My mother experimented and landed on lime, but it was never the same.

But she had another Jell-o mold up her sleeve: a strawberry Jell-o delight that had strawberries, bananas, and walnuts in it, and was slathered with sour cream. 

For Easter, she made orange Jell-o with shredded carrots and pineapple. 

Sometimes she'd whip up a lime Jell-o with canned pears special, other times she doctored up whatever-flavor-of-Jell-o was on the shelf with canned fruit cocktail or grapes.

True confession: my palate ain't all that sophisticated that I didn't absolutely love these Jell-o molds. Don't knock that orange-pineapple-carrot mold unless you've tried it. (And, yes, I have made plenty of fun of Jell-o molds over the years.)

Maybe it's because I'm half Midwest, but whie I may not ever actually make a Jell-o mold, I'm fine with eating one. 

Years ago, on a biz trip to State Farm HQ in Bloomington, Illionis, we went with our client to the campus cafeteria and there we found not one, not two, but three options for fruity Jell-os. I abstained. I knew they would not be as good as my mother's. 

Although my mother's molds sometimes used a veggie - carrots, celery - Liz never, ever, ever made a savory Jell-o Salad. 

But they're apparently a thing. A gourmet thing.

A recent NY Times article asked a compelling question that drew me right in. Can the Jell-o Salad Be Redeemed! 

Talk about click-bait!

Aspics and other savory gelatins are popular again, this time with top-notch ingredients and a refined, ultramodern look. (Source: NY Times)

What's pictured here is not, of course, an ultra-modern, top notch anything. It's a totally vile 1950's recipe using unflavored gelatin, tomato soup, spaghetti-o's and hot dogs. 

Revolting dosen't begin to describe this desecration. We didn't have a lot of say over what my mother put on the table. She occasionally served something that my father liked, but the kiddos mostly found disgusting. Looking at you, creamed chip beef. Looking at you, liver and onions. But once a year, we were all capable of gagging down a meal we hated. Early on, I mastered the act of sluicing down a bite of something disagreeable by floating it down the hatch in a mouthful of milk. But if my mother ever tried to serve this, there would have been a riot in our kitchen. And rightly so.

But The Times isn't talking about hot dogs and spaghetti-o's. They're talking about high-end top-chef creations. 

They're talking about chefs who make "aspics [which] resemble Lucite sulptures." Like one that features soft-boiled egg, herbs and cubed sausage and ox tongue. Ox tongue? That's right up there in the Top (Bottom?) Five when it comes to disgusting foods. Personally, I'd rather sup on Lucite.

A chef at a Berlin restaurant came up with a dish that 

...used a dashi-flavored gelatin to suspend crisp endive leaves and jewel-like kumquats, making the broth with fermented smoked bonito and umami-rich aged rausu kombu from the Japanese island of Hokkaido.

Oh, FFS. 

Anyway, I was not surprised to learn that this Berlin restaurant went out of business last year.  

I don't care how fancy-schmancy these "salads" are, the short answer to Can the Jell-o Salad Be Redeemed! is not really. A shorter version is NFW. A still shorter version is NO. 

A Jell-o mold with fruit, on the other hand... There is a gelatin brand that makes apple. I'm hosting Thanksgiving. Maybe, just maybe.  

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