@RussSharek @thegibson@hackers.town @Ventronik I'd like to point out that this is from Minnesota in 1969. We didn't get good quality fresh produce in the winter until the late 80s, I heard. My mother would talk about looking forward to lemon and rasin sauce because she didn't really get tart foods in the winter very often.

Imagine trying to make a fruit salad, but you can't actually get any fruit that isn't canned because it can't get so far north without spoiling, so you make it work with packaged foods instead. That being said, my aunts have a recipe for cookie salad, so maybe the jury is still out. The core concept here is just a mixture of distinct things that taste good together, like a pasta salad, grain salad, etc. I'm not really defending jello carrot salads, but they do come out of a food system that is fundamentally different than the one we have now.

Also, this whole problem came out of trying to use a European food system in a region where really, the indigenous food system was balanced through the winter, but the European things were scarce.