The Jell-o Salad Recipe That Made Everyone Mad At Me Last Year
For as long as I can remember it sat, every November, on our Thanksgiving table, next to the turkey and the stuffing and the cranberry sauce and mashed potatoes. I assumed it was a universal tradition, a side dish everyone was familiar with. In first grade Mrs. Kulina asked us to draw a picture of what Thanksgiving looked like to us. Using only the brightest green crayons I could find, I drew my masterpiece, a quivering green lump inverted onto a glass plate: Seafoam salad. Everyone gawked at what I’d drawn, viscerally unhappy with my description of the Jell-o side dish. It was then, in 1998, that I realized that the lime Jell-o dish my family treated like a delicacy was not, in fact, normal.
Here’s how you arrive at seafoam salad: you drain a big can of sliced pears, but you reserve the pear juice (have I already lost you?). The pear juice goes in a saucepan with some water until it boils, and then you add it to one large package of lime Jell-o in a heat-resistant bowl and you stir until the Jell-o dissolves. Add a cup of cold water. This will help cool off the pear juice-Jell-o mixture. Meanwhile, you want to blend the pears in a blender until they reach applesauce-like consistency. At this point you want to add the Jell-o mixture to the bowl (in Grandma Janet’s instructions, she notes that this mixture will splatter, so you want to…
