Crappy Thanksgiving!
You know Thanksgiving is creeping up on us, right? I'm fairly sure most of you people don't cook crap and tend to leave the table with all the free rolls and turkey legs you can cram in your pockets and down your socks when you think no one's looking. What, you're trying to tell me you don't use Thanksgiving to fill the fridge? Don't even try it. Lies hurt baby Jesus!
One way of avoiding being labeled as a freeloader is to bring a dish. It doesn't seem to matter what the hell is in that dish, just so long as it looks like you spent at least five minutes throwing it together. I've decided to provide a long-needed public service by providing recipes that will well-nigh guarantee that you'll never be asked to bring a dish ever again and you'll be free to stuff your bra with sweet potatoes to your heart's content.
These recipes are from the nearly inedible The New Jell-O Book of Surprises (1930) when people just didn't know any better. "Jell-O entrees. Jell-O salads. Jell-O relishes. Jell-O desserts. This booklet is so full of wonderfully good things you can make with Jell-O, your meals never, never get monotonous. Just open it...any page...and spring a real Jell-O surprise for dinner today!"
I'm scared already.
Chicken Mousse. Hmmm, mousse. I don't particularly like the idea of my chicken being foamy, smelling like the 1980s and looking like a Flock of Seagulls hairdo, but I'm picky that way. I'm guessing that by the time the Great Depression got cranking, people would pretty much eat anything they could get their hands on, though any normal person would have made chicken soup and had the lemon Jell-O with whipped cream for dessert. See, when you get all fancy you scare little kids and it just ain't right.
Corned Beef Loaf. This just screams "glistening and jiggly". I might be going out on a limb here, but I'd say this serves way more than ten people because only one or two in the crowd would be brave enough to even taste it. This is one of those recipes where the separate ingredients are perfectly fine by themselves but when they're combined they tend to resemble something that has been eaten once already. You'll be carrying this one back home with you, so be sure to stick it in the freezer to dust off and bring in next Thanksgiving. If you're lucky you might get several years out of it.
Cardinal Salad. The main disappointment of this recipe is that there isn't a speck of cardinal in it. Once we've all gotten over the glaring omission of dead birdies attractively molded around the center we can consider the comedy aspects of this festive salad. I'd say park it on the dessert table amid the Jell-O fruit molds and sit back and watch the fun when Grandpa bites into a particularly horse-radishy slab of beet, or when little Cindy gets ahold of that wad of grated onion you didn't mix in very well. And don't say a word when Aunt Bess puts a big scoop of Cool Whip on top!
Remember, it's not really Thanksgiving until somebody starts crying.
