Blue Food!

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Grandson David’s favorite color is blue. Most foods are NOT blue. When Jell-o was on sale, I noticed Berry Blue and bought it. It seemed appropriate to use it with fresh blueberries, another of David’s favorites.

David put on his appreciation face.

None of us had ever had this flavor before, and David was pleased with the color. I told him I licked the spoon after putting the salad in the refrigerator. It tasted like a fruity Jell-o, one with no distinct flavor. Pictured is my serving, blue Jell-o with bananas and blueberries.

It looks more like a monster than something edible. This is larger than life-size.

We looked at the box to see if any particular fruit was mentioned, and it wasn’t. I read several articles on line, one saying the flavor was a combination of raspberry and blueberry. Another said it was introduced in 1992. We don’t keep up with food fads, but 28 years was a long time to wait. What about you? Do you try foods or recipes when they are in the news?

Published by Anne Mehrling

I'm a retiree who loves to write about life in the mountains of North Carolina.

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51 thoughts on “Blue Food!”

  3. That’s funny because we always had Jell-o and especially in Summer with fruit cocktail or fresh fruit in it … my mom would make that Berry Blue and she didn’t care for it, but she would say “you’re the baby, so I’ll make it for you” … now that was a nice memory. They used to have a recipe that you put gummy fish in it and it was supposed to look like water, like people make the chocolate pudding with oreo bits on top and inside the pudding and a gummy worm on top and call it “dirt pudding” … that is fun too.

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      1. My mom and I did the grocery shopping together for years – she wanted to pick out her meat was one reason, but then our small grocery store (like a regular-sized Kroger) closed suddenly and I had to migrate over to Meijer which is like a KMart Super K or a Walmart – big but has everything. One-stop shopping. I went there this morning – first time since 03/01. It was better than doing housework, though I was masked up, had too many clothes on – it is stinkin’ hot here. Anyway, after Farmer Jack’s closed, I did all the shopping myself after that – it was getting difficult for Mom to get around to do that task anyway. So, she’d write out the grocery list, give me the coupons etc. and off I went. I would get to the store, scan the list to know where to start … I’d see “blue Jell-o for the baby” … or at Christmastime, “red food coloring for the baby’s candy-cane cookies.” I quit buying the red food coloring as it was a lot of work and fiddling around and told her they were out … you had two colors of dough, had to braid them like a rope to make the candy cane. I think when we discussed sausage gravy one time, my annual treat was sausage gravy and biscuits every Fourth of July weekend when I did the windows. Clean windows were big for my mom – I don’t like climbing on a ladder so it was not one of my favorite jobs and she was persnickety about streaks, so the grocery list would say “sausage gravy and Pillsbury biscuits for you for doing the windows.: 🙂 I was well fed and we had treats, but these were my favorites, not my Mom’s.

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          1. One of my mom’s all-time favorite things was coleslaw. And I think she got that from my grandmother who was teased all the time – she would make pot roast every Sunday with “cabbage salad” and would stand there cutting up a few heads of cabbage every Sunday. People would say “Minnie has two specialties: pot roast and cabbage salad.” The rest of the week she had a ham and would whack off slices of it with veggies or on a bread or a kaiser bun.

            Now my mom must have had a dozen recipes for coleslaw, likely in her head … she liked making creamy, vinaigrette dressing, sweet and sour coleslaw, and many others, including one with pineapple and marshmallows and Miracle whip – that was my favorite type. In later years, I encouraged my mom not to stand and chop cabbage to make coleslaw and how about we would get the bagged variety and slaw dressing. She would not hear of it and I finally won her over though. When we did not go out so much the last few years, I would go to a local produce market which made this wonderful rustic bread, the loaves were not that big, but we’d get a few at a time as it was better to eat fresh and it had no preservatives so the other one had to go into the freezer. Anyway, we’d go on a Saturday and get that bread, a little lunchmeat, and I used to get their Italian coleslaw – my mom tried to figure out the recipe. We’d pile the slaw onto the meat – huge sandwich but tasty. I can take or leave coleslaw but theirs was great, and I used to just buy the bagged for me only until there were so many issues with listeria in bagged salads, so I stopped buying it. But their slaw was to die for. We’d eat it on some lunchmeat on open-face sandwiches. My mom liked soft-boiled eggs and used the smaller pieces of that small loaf of bread for toasting in the toaster oven for “dipping in her egg yolk” … now I am not a fan of soft-boiled eggs. I liked mine more than a 3-minute egg. I’m not a fussy eater at all, but don’t like a runny egg. But that was our Saturday afternoon lunch and Sunday morning breakfast many times. My mom also loved Italian food – spaghetti made with Lipton dry onion mix was her favorite to cook and what was left over,she would make into baked spaghetti with cheese. I’d enjoy some of those dishes now – when I retire, I am going to dig out those recipes and have some treats. My meals are nothing special – trust me.

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              1. Yes … and pickly type foods. She liked pickled beets. I’m not a pickle person – I like a nice dill pickle sometimes, but not like she did. I like crisp toast too. The rustic breads are good for that – something crispy and you can sink your teeth into, but only if you can buy them sliced. I like a boule or baguette, as did my mom and put some peanut butter or lunchmeat on it, but prefer sliced bread. Bread is my downfall.

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      1. I thought it was cute too – I did not have gummy worms in my blue Jell-O BTW. As to the applesauce, I found the recipe just now. I would have copied it out of the red binder cookbook for you, but searched online … this is no doubt where my mom got it. She subscribed to “Taste of Home” and “Taste of Home Extra”for year.s She got a lot of recipes from those magazines and I have found it there – same recipe, but raspberry gelatin. We just had lime as the pop was lemon-lime. It was delicious – we liked applesauce. I love applesauce and go through one of the large ones per week. I still have some downstairs from my Winter stash. Here is the recipe for you/John – we didn’t have it in a mold that I recall, just a big bowl. Sometimes she made it when we had pork chops. https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/applesauce-raspberry-gelatin-mold/

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          1. Yes it was – sometimes my mom would make a pork tenderloin and stuff it and we had that applesauce Jell-O then too. One more thing – my mom loved pie. I can take or leave pie, preferring the crunchy crisp of a cookie over pie or even cake. Yes, odd I know. So my mom’s favorites were pumpkin and lemon meringue pies. She would be cutting the pie, “evening it out” – she said it was her job to keep the pie even for the next portions – just an excuse to take off a little more off the sides .:)

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              1. Yes, you made that special pie with the berries and I told you about the red currant pie. That market closed suddenly and there were no other markets that carried red currants- we looked hi and lo for them.

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  5. If I had grandchildren I would definitely try out variations of jello! I took a recipe off a link the other day as it looked verrrrry simple and made a lemon cake yesterday – it was tasty but it came out rather like a plump pancake –

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  9. I think I got jelloed out as a kid. It was frequently the dessert at the school cafeteria. I do like it poured over a cake with holed poked in it. As a standalone? Only for colonoscopy preps!

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  10. Well, I’d definitely try blue Jell-O, since I do love blueberries. My mom also used to put all sorts of canned fruit mixed into the Jell-O. Your pic looks good to me!!

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  12. When my twins graduated from college last year I tried to find blue foods/candy to go with the university colors at their party. It wasn’t easy! Great job honoring his favorite color with this fun dessert.

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      1. I’ll have to locate one of the photos to remind myself. I definitely recall a nut covered in some sort of blueberry coating that filled one bowl. Another was navy blue M&Ms…

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  13. At summer camp one year I went to a cooking class, and we were told to avoid blue at all costs since people were averse to it. I always found that intriguing since kids always seemed to go for blue ice pops, blue Koolaid and blue sports drinks and jello. I know they are my favorites. Haha. Looks yummy with the fruit.

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