Mousse Madness

Allow me to start off this post by saying that I loooooooooove cottage cheese. Always have. Always will.

But when you combine Cottage Cheese with Knox Gelatine - well, that's another story my friends.

This week's salad adventure is from the "Creative Cooking with Cottage Cheese" cookbook. I am guessing mid-1960's although the copyright date is not printed anywhere. How annoying.

Anyway, my "Cottage Tuna Mousse" salad started out innocently enough. I assembled some chopped veggies, some pimento-stuffed olives, and a can of tuna...

But - It was when I started putting together my gelatin mixture that things got a little ugly. You see, when you combine tomato juice, cottage cheese and sour cream with a packet of Knox gelatin and then suspend your other ingredients all up in there...well let's just say it ain't pretty.

In fact it might scare you a little.

Here is a view of the underbelly

But after chilling it for a few hours and unmolding it onto some salad greens, it literally becomes a thing of beauty...

Breathtaking, isn't it?

Try this angle on for size

Surprise!! Sometimes a jello mold that starts out as an ugly duckling might just turn out to be a swan! A beautiful, stinky, shiny, gelatinous swan.

As for the flavor, well that remains to be seen. So let's slice off a big ol' slab and find out...

FYI - It jiggles and smells really bad

THE VERDICT: Well I'll be honest, at first I was horrified to put this in my mouth. The texture and color were a bit off-putting to say the least. But once I talked myself into taking a bite, it really wasn't too bad. I could definitely taste the cottage cheese. And the tuna. And the olives. But you know what? It was a pretty good combo! Thus proving once again, cottage cheese makes EVERYTHING better!