What?

I'm pretty sure that's going to be fire. Dinner and dessert all in one!

It's an interesting bit of American history, actually.

During WWII there was a small revolution in food preservation technology to keep the army properly fed. Then when the war ended, a lot of those highly processed foods started to make their way to the grocery stores and onto pantry shelves.

The problem was that because a lot of these ingredients were new, no one really knew what to do with them. This led to a lot of absolutely heinous recipes being shared in magazines.

These recipes usually took the form of sweet and savory jello-based salads

For reference

Honestly those ingredients really do seem like they'd be in some sort of gelatin dessert.

I would at least try it, looks nice!

If there's nothing else in the pantry, boil the noodles and serve with tuna. Separately make the jello for dessert. If you have other things, do that but make a sauce for the noodles as well.

For more hideous context… there’s things like this, too:

And this:

How, eh, high are you?

lol I assumed she was talking to Jesus about this at first

Hi! How are you?

That actually looks tasty. Would actually try it out.

High, how hi are you?

If i were served that, my manners would require that I take a small portion and try it, but then to feign some excuse to not finish that. it's only polite, right?

Who could forget Jesus’s sermon where he fed all those people with only two cans of tuna and a box of jello mix

If clear jello is used, the taste is often fine, as it almost has no flavor

The problem is the absolute horrifying texture that food in jello has

What helped is that gelatine pre-industrial food processing was very hard to make and prohibitively expensive. Hence it a was only for the very rich.

Like with grass lawns, when they became attainable for the middle class people jumped on those, because regardless if it's actually good it showed your status as recently affluent.

This is why they became a staple, only the lawn stuck, though.

Just like grandma should never have made

What would that be? If it's anything like preserved eels I'm so down.

Jello… expires?

Excuse me, I need to go check something…

I've made gelatin over a wood fire once. From animal parts. It was for historical reenactment purposes, and I can confirm, I never ever want to do that again. I can't imagine doing it in my own home, especially not without the benefit of a modern fume hood.

Then on the next line I saw fish, and thought this was going to be some kind of loaves and fishes story.

Then I saw jello and really wondered how they would tie that in. What would Jesus turn jello into?

Then ultimately I was disappointed. Worst Bible story ever.

That’s what everyone says when you ask about a food you haven’t tried before. “Oh, it tastes just like chicken preserved eels.”

Not much dawg. What’s up with you?

Ah, you know. Getting there.

You might actually be the target audience for this. I hear preserved eels and I imagine the most disgusting texture of me life, to be fair, I live a a 3 day drive from the closest ocean, so I never got much of a taste for a lot of seafood.

Is that meat on the jello?

I ate an uncomfortable amount of Jello, both by itself and full of other things, back in the '60s. You can't overstate how many recipes in women's magazines had Jello in them.

You do realize the jello is melted Collagen right? It's in its natural habitat. There's meat on those bones again.

They're made from gelatin, and that's made with collagen, an animal product.

The hides and bones of certain animals — often cows and pigs — are boiled, dried, treated with a strong acid or base, and finally filtered until the collagen is extracted. The collagen is then dried, ground into a powder, and sifted to make gelatin.

That's some recycling there.

Aw man, I'm too high for this.

This dude, who is as gay as the day is long, does a Vintage Recipes series where he makes and eats all this weird old shit from the 1950s. It cracks me up, though I realize it's not for everyone.

You can zoom in the image to read the recipe.

It's "seafood salad" so I guess it's pure canned tuna. It's also the least disgusting part of it.

I am shocked that this link was not to a B Dylan Hollis video. There must be a market for flamboyant gay men that make bizarre vintage recipes.

An example

Haha I love how they have damn near the same reaction face when finally eating it!

Tuna Mac. Super easy, filling, has protein, and dirt cheap.