Great-Grandma’s Green Gelatin Salad

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A vintage family favorite, this creamy green gelatin salad has bright flavor and is fun to serve!  This treat is coming to you from great-grandma’s recipe box.

     This jello salad is a vintage favorite.  It is creamy and filled with bits of pineapple.  Of course the lime jello holds it all together.  Make it in a big dish and serve it by the spoonful or chill it in small molds for an extra fun presentation.  My great-grandma loved it and I have a feeling you will too!

    It was hard to decide who to give credit to for this recipe.  My great-grandma got it from her mom (my great-great-grandma of dutch apple cake fame).

     But my dad and his siblings remember it as something their grandma would make.  Apparently this one was a particular favorite of my uncle Mike.  I can see why, it really is pretty tasty.

    It seems as though my great-grandma Rees liked fruit salads with some substance.  A lot of the recipes I have from her and gelatin and fruit or the frozen fruit salad that still makes an appearance at every Rees family holiday.

     She isn’t the only one.  My husband’s aunt also shared a cherry and pineapple jello salad that was also delicious!

     This is a good mix of lime gelatin made creamy with some cream cheese.  Plus, I love pineapple so that as an add-in is great for me!  Just be sure to use canned pineapple and don’t try to get fancy and use fresh pineapple.

     Much like when making the Hawaiian sweet rolls, there is an enzyme in fresh pineapple that doesn’t work well for bread baking or gelatin setting.  The canning process neutralizes the problem.

    I thought it would be fun to do it as a mold.  I have these little jello molds that were my great-grandma Schwanke’s.

    The first time I tried it did not work at all.  Not to worry though, it was still good stirred up and served that way.

   So this time I held my breath and crossed my fingers.  I drained the pineapple pretty well to try to minimize any extra liquid as I assumed that was part of the problem last time.

    I also did a couple of servings in ramekins just in case. But guess what… it worked!

    The little mold was just begging for some sort of garnish.  I can envision these served on a leaf of lettuce or something, but I didn’t have any.  But I did have some maraschino cherries and after I put one on there, I knew it was perfect.

     Can’t you just picture your great-grandma serving you something like this at a family dinner?  I definitely can.  And I can’t wait to be that grandma too!  Do you have any jello salads in your family?

For another retro looking gem, try grandma’s date nut loaves. They are baked in cans making them look really cool and they are perfectly giftable that way as well!

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