If you are the sort of white person who has an art degree and whose heart lifts at the sound of the opening strain of the saxophone theme to All Things Considered, you might wrinkle your nose...oh woops, there I go alienating all 3 of my readers! Stay with me now!
This time of year always finds me thinking about my family's holiday menu, full of recipes plucked by my grandma from newspapers 40 years ago. The family holiday menu exists in a kind of 1960s Americana vortex. I didn't realize until I went to college that other people weren't eating Jello salads on Christmas-- that no one had eaten jello salad since 1983. When a marshmallow cream and cream cheese based fruit salad failed to produce the desired oohs and ahhs (and instead produced undisguised disdain) amongst my peers, I realized, with no small amount of shock, that my diet identified me as The Wrong Kind of White Person. Mainly for health reasons, and partially due to snobbery and embarrassment, I've wandered far and away from my food origins, trying, with a fairy-dust sprinkle of nutritional yeast, to make them disappear. Although I've learned to love health food as much as I formerly loved trash, there is no need to deny this part of myself. As a holiday homage to my now deceased Grandma Nina, I provide you with the recipe for Pretzel Salad. I dare you to make it-- though I'm warning you, this desert is in no way sanctioned by Terry Gross, and to your own horror, you'll probably love it.
Pretzel Salad
2 & 2/3 cups broken pretzels, in small pieces
1 & 1/2 cups margarine, melted
4 packages (3 ounces each) cream cheese, softened
1 & 1/4 cups sugar
1 container (9 ounces) whipped topping
1 package (6 ounces) strawberry jello
2 cups pineapple juice or water
1 large package frozen whole strawberries (no sugar added) or 2 to 3 cups fresh strawberries
Place pretzels and margarine in botton of 9X13 inch baking dish and bake 10 minutes at 400 degrees. Cool.
Mix cream cheese and sugar. Spread over top of lukewarm, baked pretzels. Spread whipped topping over cheese mixture. Chill.
Dissolve gelatin in boiling pineapple juice/water. Stir in strawberries and allow to thicken almost to jelled point. Spread over topping/cheese/pretzel layer and refrigerate until solid.
2 comments:
every year for the holidays, i loved eating my stepmom's (who was raised in virginia) alligator salad. it consisted of some combination of cream cheese, pistachio jello, walnuts, pineapple, cool whip, and marshmallows. i am so into this post, and want to make this recipe. delish!
Oh man, this sounds wonderful. I'm so pleased to know that I have a friend under the age of 56 who knows and loves jello-based dishes.
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