This post is about scary Midwestern food crimes

Jello. You can’t avoid it, at least not in the Midwest. It’s a part of who we are, who we want to be, and figuring out in what ways we want to desecrate nature and the Right Way Of Things.

Not all Jello is bad. In fact, most can be quite tasty, especially when mixed with things besides water. But some key questions remain about this not-quite-liquid and not-quite-solid. How does a mold hold form like that? Do these colors exist anywhere else in nature? Why did Jello Jigglers look so very exciting on the television commercial, and yet disappoint so thoroughly after you made them?

The most important Jello encounter anyone in the Midwest will have is with the Jello salad. When you say “Jello salad” up here, most people will nod, but I can assure you they all have different salads in mind. Here are the tenets of what Jello salad must include: Jello and something else suspended within the Jello.

Most Jello salad is innocent – fruity red or orange Jello and canned fruit. Red Jello tastes like Red (the same way that red suckers from the dentist taste Red), and fruit compliments this faux fruit taste nicely. But in a land of long, dark winters, and a pantry full of Jello, Midwestern cooks have found some fierce ways to warp what you thought was safe.

My cousin sent me an email in our back and forth on Thanksgiving dinner planning with references to the “Eisenhower Salad”(lime Jello, cottage cheese, horseradish, and pineapple), which sounds remarkably similar to my mother’s lemon Jello, cucumber and cottage cheese salad, which is heavenly in the summertime.

There are no shortage of distressing Jello stories, and I’d be horrible if I didn’t relate my own. In high school, I was in Iowa (where else?) for my grandfather’s funeral. Being Protestant, my family engaged in the traditional “combat grief with food” ritual in the Fellowship Hall when we returned from the cemetery. I was at a bit of a loss, and wandered aimlessly over to the buffet, which was piled high with trays of bars and pans of hotdish contributed by the wonderful small town community. At the end of it, and next to a tub of Cool Whip, was a small pan of red Jello with specks in it.

I scooped out a square onto my plate, lobbed a dab of Cool Whip over the top, and sat down. “Are you only going to eat red Jello?” my mom queried, but ultimately left me alone. It only took one bite to realize that the well-meaning chef might have been a bit worse for wear in the eyesight department: what should have been fruit cocktail (grapes, peaches, maraschino cherries) stuck in the middle was instead succotash (lima beans, green beans, corn, and peas).