We grew up poor. These jellos were our desserts, plus th they used up the older vegetables rather than waste them. Green jello with celery and olives was a treat. I didn't like the tomato jello with vegetables, though.
Umm, how about eating the JELLO as a treat?! Vegetables and jello... gross.
Did you guys ever consider it might be a bit rude to call something gross that another person explicitly explained was a treat for them growing up? When did we become a bunch of foodie snobs around here?
Well people like different things so.... no? I think bananas are gross, but I'm sure someone had them as a treat growing up. Is anyone here offended?
To derail the derail, did you know that the bananas we eat aren't the same ones your grandparents ate? The world used to eat the Gros Michel cultivar, which was reportedly more sweet and flavorful than bananas today. (Gros Michel simply meaning "Big Mike," which is an awesome name for a banana.)
But being a monoculture, the lack of genetic diversity left it susceptible to disease. In the early half of the 20th century, Panama disease nearly wiped out the cultivar altogether. It inspired the 1923 novelty song, "Yes, We Have No Bananas." By the 50s you couldn't get a goddamn banana nowheres.
Enter the shitty Cavendish banana, the world's runner-up. It's a banana only a mother could love. (My mom loves Cavendish bananas.) It's a little starchier and more bitter than the Gros Michel, but don't worry about that, because the chief selling point of the Cavendish is that you can grow it when your entire Gros Michel plantation is wiped out by marauding fungus.
And, I should note, with humanity having not learned a goddamn thing from Panama disease, Cavendish is another monoculture, with the singular cultivar representing around 50% of all the bananas grown in the entire world, leaving it vulnerable for a single disease or pest to wipe out the world's entire banana supply in short order, again.
(I learned all this from Michael Pollan, this is me plugging his books.)