#1- Jellied Chicken Salad
Making It.
Mike: This card belongs in the "Salads for Every Occasion" division of the Betty Crocker Recipe Card Library (or BCRCL, or short). Upon completion of the gelatinous mold (you're a gelatinous mold), Emily declared that this dish would be "perfect for an outdoor evening," which I misheard as "perfect for an adult evening."
Emily: Oh no, Jellied Chicken Salad is full of all the ingredients that kids can enjoy, too: jell-o, chicken...jellied chicken...olives...onions...
Mike: It's like a Voltron of kid-friendly ingredients!
Emily: While shopping for ingredients, I almost couldn't find plain unflavored gelatin in the grocery store but I knew what to look for because I used to put clear gelatin on my face on halloween for the look of melting skin. I finally found it in a dusty box on the lowest shelf. While being in the gelatin section, I was inspired to make chocolate pudding and put it in the fancy cups.
Notes on making it: it's confusing to work with gelatin without proper instructions. We weren't clear on whether we should boil the gelatin before chilling it or not. Maybe in 1971, when the recipe card was printed, making gelatin was common knowledge. The ingredient list was small, but labor intensive. Slicing olives isn't easy. We were also supposed to mince the onion, but who knows how to do that.
Mike accidentally put twice as much lemon juice into the mixture. And Emily spilled the chilling chicken broth jello twice all over the refrigerator.
Mike: I made the chocolate pudding and feels positive that it will be delicious.
Emily: It's chilling. The waiting game is hard. The suspense is killing me.
Eating It.
A period of time later:
Mike: The Jellied Chicken Salad is now sufficiently gelatinized, and ready to eat. It truly looks terrible. We had to resort to our tried-and-true decision-making process, a best 2 out of 3 Rock, Paper, Scissors contest because neither one of us wanted to go first. I lost 2-0, and gamely tucked into a fairly large piece...
This is where I need to step aside for a moment. Have you ever seen that old Saturday Night Live commercial with Bill Murray for the natural spring water that had been dredged from Lake Eerie? When he's pouring the "water" into a glass, and it's coming out slowly because it's this thick, gooey clear liquid?
"Everything you've ever wanted in a spring water. And more."
This is pretty much how I feel about Jellied Chicken Salad which, incidentally, has got to be one of the worst things I've ever put into my mouth. Upon my first bite all I could really think was "Uck," along with a fairly powerful urge to vomit. Nothing much of substance to report there. Luckily, I'd anticipated this reaction, which is why I'd grabbed such a large slice to begin with. I knew I'd need more than one bite to really get the feel of the thing.
So on to bite #2, which made me think of...the movie Titanic.
I kept thinking of that scene, after the ship had gone down, when everyone's clinging to their life rafts amid all those chunks of iceberg floating in the water. Bite #2 pretty much tasted like that scene from Titanic, except the chunks of iceberg were actually chunks of olive (if you know me, you know that I hate hateHATE olives) floating in what wasn't so much water as it was some thick, gooey clear liquid that'd been dredged from Lake Eerie. The only think I had to cling to (my life rafts, if you will) were the largish chunks of chicken that, mercifully, had remained relatively tasty and unmolested by the jelly.
But mostly it's just probably the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth, and makes me want to vomit.
Emily: OK so as I was preparing the dish for presentation, (ha!) I had a really hard time getting out of the dish it gelatinized in. I cut the edges and turned it upside down. As I shook it, the jellied chicken salad proceeded to make obscene squishing noises that frankly made me blush a bit.
Finally it came out of the dish in two pieces but was easily disguised with garnishes of parsley, lettuce, tomato, and pimento. What is pimento anyway?
Finally it came out of the dish in two pieces but was easily disguised with garnishes of parsley, lettuce, tomato, and pimento. What is pimento anyway?
Mike took the first bite, and after I pleaded with him to stop there, he somehow managed to eat the whole slice of salad. I saw his jaw quiver a tiny bit somewhere around the third bite and knew I was in trouble. When my turn came, I took a small bite, with all the necessary ingredients in it and powered through. I immediately was taken back by its sourness (possibly the extra lemon juice - see above), the saltiness (but not in a good way), and the strange feeling of eating cold jell-o that tastes nothing like the jell-o we all know and love. As the concoction warmed up in my mouth ( I just couldn't get it down) and as the tears started pouring down my cheeks, the chunks of chicken added to the feeling that I was chewing the vomit in my mouth instead of normally spitting it out.
Final words:
Emily: I would punch anyone who brought this to my party.
Mike: I feel some heartburn coming on.
And so here ends our first chapter of the Weirdo Betty Crocker Recipe Project. Stay tuned for next month's installment!
