The Jell-o Project: Orange Fluff

For Brian's Back to the Future themed birthday dinner party, I decided that Jell-o needed a place at the table. But not molded Jell-o or cut and serve Jell-o. I wanted a Jell-o salad that you could scoop, and that would go well with pizza.

Whether or not it went well with pizza is still up for debate, but Orange Fluff Jell-o Salad was another, too-good-to-be-healthy "salad." And it probably isn't healthy, but I made it anyway.

The recipe made a LOT of orange fluff. I should have known this would be the case when I saw it called for a full pound of Cool Whip. That's a lot of Cool Whip. I brought the salad to the party and it didn't even disappear by half!

So I brought it home for the kids.

The feedback was typical.

Jonah grabbed a bowl and used it to scoop orange fluff, so that the side of the bowl was covered in fluff. It was a mess. "I didn't want to dirty a spoon," he said. I pointed out he could have used the spoon he was currently eating with. "Oh yeah," he said.

Jonah loved it.

Isaac was leery. There is fruit in it, after all. Not just fruit, but nasty black bananas that look lovely on the day you make it, and horribly unappetizing the next. I should have skipped the bananas. He had about two bites and said it tasted fine, but that was all he wanted.

Ethan? Who knows if he's had any. Probably not.

Robert? I don't think so.

I've had several servings and think it is great. Not something I'd want more than occasionally, but certainly not bad. I think calling it a fruit salad is a stretch. Vanilla pudding, orange Jell-0, 16 oz. of Cool Whip, marshmallows and then a little canned fruit.

It's totally dessert.

Which is why I don't know why more people don't eat it for dinner. If this passes as a salad, why would you not eat it.

"Yeah, I had a big salad for dinner tonight," sounds so much better than, "I had a big bowl of pudding and marshmallows for dinner tonight." If you can get away with that kind of subtle trickery, why wouldn't you?