Yep, that’s me. I always volunteer to clean up. I love eating the leftovers. In the freezer, one of those big trays of lasagne lasts a long time—lunches for the kids for a week! What I find odd is that this urge/inclination is present even 35 years after experiencing extreme poverty. To me, this is one of the bubbles: those who come from a family (incl parents family) that has never experienced poverty or bankruptcy.
Wow, @alh. Looking at the ingredient lists of some of the recipes at the top of the list - just wow!
Alh, I have that River Road cookbook and it’s great. Gift from a friend, ages ago, then living in LA.
But in my bubble, I may make one of those in one of my fancy mold pans. No simple squares for me.
Last night, I kept thinking “jello: it was inexpensive and that’s why everyone was making it” but those ingredients aren’t inexpensive, especially wlhen I think of how my mother shopped in the 50s and 60s. We ate a whole lot of tuna casserole. These jello dishes were really elegant treats. Maybe they were the warm brie with almonds of the day?
adding: lookingforward: In my experience, they were always made in fancy molds. I am wondering who in my family has those molds now and what condition they are in, because I am really getting into the idea of picking one out to become a signature dish.
In middle school I was asked to bring a salad to a pot luck. My mom made her specialty, which we called pistachio salad. The other families were quite surprised to see about this “salad.” I had no idea that everyone didn’t eat this (and didn’t seem to recognize it as a salad.)
Murray’s quiz is relative to his idea of “mainstream [white] America”. Perhaps he did not think of people (even white people) of immigrant heritage within the last few generations as such.
When frazzled H traveled for his job he tried to make it a point to locate and purchase local cookbooks, often compiled by various women’s auxiliaries. Most would be from the mid-eighties and later. I have been shoving them aside, but might take a closer look. I have to wonder if any would have jello salads.
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Those jello molds were a staple of my childhood holiday celebrations (fifties and sixties) but I haven’t seen one in years, and I suspect my mother threw them out sometime during the seventies if not sooner.
I’m giggling here about the imagined expressions on the faces of my extended family if I were to bring one to Thanksgiving dinner, in fact.
My copy of The Joy of Cooking has recipes for all kinds of game. I don’t know if more recent editions retained them.
I’ve looked at/read the recipes? Does that give me any points?
One stark illustration of the different bubbles some older colleagues from upper/upper-middle class backgrounds in a post-college position at a financial firm and I had was in their reactions to my requesting to take my leftover food from a restaurant outing home after our group lunches/dinners.
They felt that was being “tacky” whereas I felt that’s a perfectly sensible way to be frugal and not waste perfectly good food.
I ignored them and later had the last laugh when they started to try hitting me up for “loans” because their spending habits caused them to be financially overextended despite their earning much higher incomes from having worked longer/being in more senior positions within the firm.
What’s wrong with that? :-/
Actual loans or lunch money??? Both seem kind of far fetched to me when they are your work colleagues – especially at a financial firm of all places!
I think the jello salads were mostly a midwest and southern thing. (The upper class version is aspic.)
When we had leftover food from PTA functions it all went straight to the local soup kitchen who were happy to have it.
My mother in law washed tinfoil and plastic bags. I reuse bags if they aren’t wet and tinfoil if it isn’t saucy. I use deli and take out containers. A lot of my tupperware has bit the dust and I don’t know anyone who sells it anymore.
Julia Childs’ cookbooks had whole chapters on aspic but I can’t think of anyone who would make those recipes today. It is interesting how thoroughly foods suspended in aspic has gone out of style. (At 51, I’m too young to remember when they ever were in style).
My kids will wash and reuse plastic bags and such but more due to environmental, earth friendly reasons.
“My mother saved aluminum foil, bags, plastic take-out/deli food containers, and paper plates (as long as nothing too wet was on it). I only save plastic food containers that I could reuse; the rest get tossed.”
My aforementioned late Aunt did all of those things including saving used coffee filters and taking her own doggie bags from private luncheons she was invited (like at ladies end of the season golf banquets.) She also took ketchup, salt, sugar and pepper packets from restaurants.
People would walk up to my mom and other Aunt and start saying, "Your sister blah, blah, blah and my mom would just to just say that she knew but there was nothing she could do about it.
Her D is exactly the same way (minus the doggie bags.)
These people were/are millionaires many times over.
My mom thinks it was because she was affected more by the Depression then her younger sisters - but my grandparents had money during it. My mom used to bring some of her classmates home with her after school so they couid have a glass of milk as there was no milk at their homes.
My mom must have been a Jello freak. When you were sick, you got jello mixed with warm water (before it set), when you got better, but not yet up to toast, you got cold jello. When you were well, you got jello for dessert.
She was into the molds and putting things in the jello–pineapple, nuts, carrot shavings, mandarin oranges. She did have a good salad that had pistachio jello (or at least it was green…), cottage cheese, and walnuts. Going to ask her tonight if she still has jello molds 
My SisIL still makes jello in 3 or more layers (with no solid things in it). It is very pretty and refreshing. There is sweetened condensed milk or similar for the white layers between the other layers. You have to wait and make the layers one at a time, let it cool before pouring on the next layer. I’ve never made it nor had any interest in making it but I do eat it.
My niece made the green beans with toasted onions. Everyone was surprised. My sister makes the sweet potatoes with marshmellows and a broccoli casserole with sauce and cheese melted over it. Several of us make different cranberry dishes with fresh cranberries.
H’s smoked turkey is legendary and something he just makes for special occasions.
@sryrstress - my mom, too, at least during the fifties and sixties. There was always a stack of those boxes in the pantry. We were very much upper-middle-class in the northeast. Some of the recipes seemed to come from women’s magazines, some from cookbooks, some from friends, some from food packaging. I used to buy pre-made jello cups for my children when they got sick.
I just found a couple of elaborately layered jello deserts (they are listed among fruit deserts, not salads, perhaps because of the whipped topping) in a seventies cookbook still on my shelves.
As for doggie bags - we ALWAYS took them home from restaurants, and so do my kids if they are returning to a place where they can safely store the food. They have in fact told me that they feel embarrassed to leave food behind in restaurants if they will have no place to store it. But, they take food from luncheons only if it is offered and do not take condiments.
They were taught that it is good manners not to choose a restaurant that might be too expensive for their companions, and not to order the most expensive items on the menu if someone else is paying or the bill will be evenly split.
We had acquaintances that would periodically ask us to go out to dinner with them. We always split the check. But while my wife and I order medium priced entrees, they would order the most expensive things, and then even order an extra entree to eat a little and then take the rest home. After a couple of times of that, we stopped going out with them.
Actual loans. Sometimes to the tune of a few hundred or even thousands of dollars, not lunch money. It was all a form of “keeping up with the joneses” rat race on steroids among those colleagues. Was quite mindboggling…and the competition was openly discussed in the office.
And one of those requesting it was a manager with another group which violated that firm’s conflict of interest policies between managers and staff/entry-level employees. He ended up getting demoted and transferred to a less desirable office after several staff/entry level employees including yours truly reported him on his conduct.