Betty Crocker’s Salads
General Mills
1978
I don’t know why salad books have been on my radar, but I have had a couple show up in the last few weeks. So here is the Betty Crocker version of salads. I want to yell “Stop trying to make salads happen!”
You already know what is coming. Yes, molded food. It shows up everywhere in recipes, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. Betty follows the crowd with this lovely avocado mold that just might ruin avocados for me. The rest are okay. Remember that this was before salad greens beyond iceberg lettuce were common. Nothing particularly inspirational, although I think I will pass on the banana and spinach toss.
Mary
Down with iceberg! Up with romaine!
LOL
Ugh. The weird colors again. I think Calvin’s dad in “Calvin and Hobbes” was right about how color didn’t exist back in b/w pictures timespan and only came into being later, but he didn’t elaborate on the weird years in between in which color slowly evolved and had to go through this sickening shades span 🙂 I mean, really. The first salad? Looks like wilted, dried out spinach to me…
Thank you for reminding me of that attribute of his, rather strange given he was a patent attorney.
This not only has gelatin molds, but also salad flambe! What happens to the poor spinach after you’ve torched it?
All the celery in that one makes me feel ill (as ingesting the stuff does), but even without it, the salade flambe would get my vote for worst salad idea ever. Mere roasted banana and spinach salad seems quite pedestrian by comparison — maybe even edible.
“Remember that this was before salad greens beyond iceberg lettuce were common.” Well, I see four different greens on the cover. And a later recipe uses endive. I think this book isn’t that bad if you overlook the gelatin stuff. It should still be weeded, of course.
That, I believe, was the point. That this book might not seem as impressive now because we’re used to multi-green salads, but it might have been a bigger deal at the time.
Has anyone actually eaten one of those molded affairs? Did it taste at all good?
Yes..and I may never recover.
Sweet ones, sure. Never a chicken-avocado one! Agh!
We have two 50s Jello salads that we have at holidays: cranberry and pineapple. They’re fantastic. Yum.
Mmm! Delicious avocado and banana salad!! (Not!)
Can somebody please tell me, for the love of god, why the cherry pineapple salad has horseradish in it?
I would totally eat the black cherry ginger ale one – hold the nuts.