My Madrilene Has Issues

Three cheers for Google! 

According to my research, the term "Madrilene" refers to any consommé flavored with tomato, frequently jelled and served cold. 

Yum?

This week's salad adventure is from the Weight Watchers Recipe Card Collection (1974) The Madrilene Cheese Salad is a multi-layered jello mold which is a bit tricky because the middle layer is not jello at all - its just a big slab of cottage cheese that you run through the blender with some seasoning. Needless to say, this salad has issues and is quite unstable.

The good news is that it serves 2 - so you can chow down half of this sucker even if you are watching your waistline.

Hooray?

Not My Best, Not My Worst Either

Zoom In

I had high hopes for this one. But I just couldn't keep it together. I can usually keep my jello molds pretty tight, but the layers kept slipping and I felt like at any moment it would just melt. To be honest, it was kind of a sloppy mess. I even added some cucumbers for structural support. And for decorative flair, too.

I opted for a smaller portion

THE VERDICT: It was pretty darn tasty...creamy and refreshing! In fact - the cottage cheese layer would work as a veggie dip for your next party. Just leave out the Madrilene...

We Got the Beet

Some things just belong together. Like peanut butter and jelly, mashed potatoes and gravy or macaroni and cheese.

But rarely do you ever hear someone say, "We go together like Pineapple and Beets".

Until now!

This week's salad adventure comes from Better Homes and Gardens "So Good with Fruit" cookbook (1967), and it lives in the chapter entitled "Shimmery Molded Salads". (again - 3 words that should NOT go together, but I digress).

I was attracted to this salad because it seemed unique and daring. A can of crushed pineapple. A can of sliced beets. And a box of lemon jello. Ummm. How could I not?! Seriously!

This salad came together quite easily. The hardest part was remembering to reserve the juice from the canned items to be used as the liquid for the jello mixture. I got carried away and almost totally forgot!

But after 4-5 hours in the fridge, this baby popped right out of the mold and was indeed "shimmering"!

Shine little salad...

Glimmer, Glimmer

The recipe suggests we serve it with a horseradish-spiked mayonnaise. "Really?" - I said to myself with some trepidation. And then I quickly answered myself, "Oh, what the Hell! I'm feeling adventurous. We are already mixing pineapple and beets and lemon. Go ahead and add some horseradish for good measure."

So that's what happened...

Just so you know, I always cut myself a slice of each jello mold I make. I also always take at least one bite so that I can report the verdict here. Sometimes I stop at one or two bites because it is just too horrid or intense. Other times I eat the whole slice. It just depends...

I wrote a little message on top with mayo...
Can you see it?

VERDICT: This was a winner! I would have never believed this combo would work, but it did! Even the horseradish mayo was a yummy addition. I actually had FOUR BITES of this mold. And, believe me - that's saying a lot!

Beans, Mushrooms and Despair

When it comes to scary jellied salads, no one does it better than the Weight Watchers Recipe Cards from 1974. This retro recipe card collection contains a treasure trove of delightfully awful salads...Most of which are encased in gelatin for no apparent reason.

For this week's adventure, I selected the "Bean and Mushroom Salad". Here's the recipe in case you ever take leave of your senses, and would want to make this for yourself one day.

Yeah. It's really that gross. But that recipe card only tells part of the horror story.

First of all - when you go to the supermarket to get your ingredients, its like a really weird scavenger hunt as you try to find everything. Pimentos! Knox Unflavored Gelatin! Onion flakes! Canned mushrooms! Who in their right mind buys these things anymore?

Next - as you prepare this salad, it becomes apparent that you are entering some type of twilight zone for vegetables. Let's review: Go ahead and take a bunch of perfectly good vegetables and suspend them in a clear jellied form, oh and make sure you have combined them with a buttload of artificial sweetener and vinegar first. Then wait about 5 hours before you can even eat it.

It glistens...

It trembles...

It twitches...

Let me assure you, it tastes as bad as it looks.

Plus there is the added bonus that it sticks to your plate even when you turn it sideways and try to throw it in the garbage. It's like the salad that WILL NOT DIE.

You cannot get rid of this thing,
no matter how hard you try.

When I finally disposed of this salad catastrophe, the smell of vinegar still lingered in the air for hours. Just to remind me of what I had just done.

VERDICT: There is really no need for this salad to exist. Folks, take my advice...the next time you have a taste for green beans and mushrooms - crack open the cans, pour them in a bowl, heat them up and eat 'em!

The Agony of Defeat

I did some jello molding this week. And I'm not gonna lie - it wasn't pretty.

Just like any other artistic medium, sometimes your work turns out to be a cherished masterpiece and other times it turns out to be a total pile of garbage.

This week, I attempted 2 simple molded salads. They should have been a snap for a seasoned jello badass like me. But for some reason, the gelatine goddesses were not on my side.

My first mold attempt was the basic "Garden Patch Salad" from The Knox On-Camera Recipes cookbook... Or as I like to call it "The Bible of Gel Cookery".  Per the recipe instructions - I was told I could mix my vegetables with abandon here. Because they all contribute to the color and flavor of this jellied potpourri. Um... yeah.

Sadly - mine was less like jellied potpourri and more like jellied hot mess.

When good gelatine molds go bad...

Ew.

After that debacle, I decided to try a fun little Minted Pineapple salad from the "Joys of Jello" cookbook. For this one, you use the can from your pineapple tidbits as your mold. It contains lemon jello, canned pineapple and mint extract. Sounds adorable, right?

All went well on this one until I unmolded it, and half of the thing went droopy on me. Instead of popping out of the mold like a bouncy little spring, it just sort of fell onto the plate in a semi-gelled pile of yellow goo. It looked so pitiful, I wanted to hug it. But I didn't.

Where did it all go wrong? 

At least my dog, Oakley seems interested in it.

OK, so it is clear that I need to really sit down and analyze this gelling dilemma. Am I just rusty? Are my jello molds jinxed? Did the gelatine goddesses put a curse on me?

Stay tuned to find out...