Green and Red.

These are the traditional jello colors. And jello, strange food that it is, is surprisingly traditional. American as apple pie. Or green jello.

There is a rumor, though I couldn’t find a website for it, that green jello conduct brainwaves.

What does this mean?

I first encountered jello as an abstraction when I visited North Dakota. That’s jello country. My youngest brother was attending the university there, and he had a lot of anthropological observations.

“There are only two acceptable colors for jello: Green and Red.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. But there’s more! Jello can be either a side dish, as in ‘salad’, or a dessert.”
“How do you tell when it’s which?”
“When it’s dessert, it has whipped cream on top.”

The reason I bring this up, is that I’ve been rediscovering the joys of jello in my own life. I use whip cream on it, so it must be desert.

I like orange.

And yellow jello. This same brother, when he was in the hospital getting his tonsils out, was offered jello.
“Yellow jello?” he asked the nurse hopefully.
“No, we only have green or red jello.”

He turned them down. If it wasn’t yellow, he didn’t want jello.

I have some yellow jello waiting to be made. But as I was at the grocery store, I thought I ought to give green and red a chance. Maybe they were popular because of innate qualities, not merely blind tradition.

Green jello is simple. It’s lime.

But red jello could be many flavors. Cherry. Strawberry. Raspberry.

And there was a new one. Cranberry.

I thought I would try it.

It wasn’t as good as I hoped. Not tart enough.

Just thought I’d let you know.