The Jello Salad that Punished a President

Fear itself.

This past month has been difficult. Everyone was sick for 90% of February, my beloved gramma died right before her 98th birthday, and the weather decided to match my mood with dreary rain for at least four ENTIRE days (I may be from Pittsburgh, but I clearly am Southern Californian now and ). But we made it, and with lots of travel upcoming, I’m making the most of a quiet few weeks of cooking, eating, editing, and reading. Thanks to those of you who knew and have reached out, it meant a lot.

I'm not ready to share more here right now, but I’ll say that my gramma’s best traits — and her craziest traits — led me to creative expression, a politics major, and the ability to laugh at an outrageous world. I can hear her full-throated whooping laugh in my ears right now, as I imagine her watching Richard Nixon’s ham mousse plop onto a plate like so much beige hate. I miss her, in all her complicated, wonderful glory. Cookin’ with Congress would not exist without her.

FDR’s Housekeeper Forced This Jello on Him

There’s an incredible detail in Alex Prud’homme’s Dinner with the President that I’d never read in previous biographies or tales of the FDR presidency: Henrietta Nesbitt, the White House housekeeper, was a weapon of revenge. There were actually two purposes to Nesbitt’s employment: the first was that FDR’s tastes were decidedly adventurous and Eleanor felt that the White House could not be seen dining extravagantly while much of the country starved during the Great Depression. But the second was to exact passive aggressive punishment on FDR through food.

First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt was keenly aware of Franklin’s affairs with other women, and so, she employed a non-chef, non-cook to oversee the kitchen and ensure that her husband was fed a steady diet of awful fare. Their relationship was complex, affectionate, loving, distant, friendly, slightly related (fifth cousins once removed — aren’t we all?) and strong. There were rumors of a lavender marriage and of liaisons on both sides (hard to confirm, but seemingly true), but one thing we do know that FDR’s second greatest enemy in 1940 was Henrietta Nesbitt and that was no mistake.

Some of the items that were consistently served to FDR:

• Jellied prunes with cheese

• Chicken scraps

• Liver

• and Echo Emerald Salad

The recipe for that salad (notsalad) is below. Nesbitt would also serve the same dish for a week straight, which was the ultimate annoyance for a man who valued variety and exoticism in his diet. She even directly refused FDR’s requests, instead replacing them with her own choices (such as serving tea to guests instead of coffee). Every time FDR would yell at Henrietta and instruct her otherwise, Eleanor would gently pull her aside and tell her to ignore the president’s outbursts — he was just stressed, keep on cookin’. Was he stressed? If you call a blood pressure of 200/100 during a world war and an economic depression an indicator of stress, yeah, yeah, he was stressed.

But eating this food would spike my blood pressure too. It probably did.

This is what vengeance looks like:

And this is how you make it. Use this at your discretion on family and friends. I hope you have not been wronged so deeply.

Echo Emerald Salad

• 2 cups boiling water

• 1.5 cups cold water

• 1 six-ounce package of lime Jello

• .5 cup white vinegar

• 1 cup chopped celery

• 1 heaping tbsp diced pimientos

• 1 20oz can crushed pineapple

Add boiling water to Jello, stir until dissolved. Add cold water and vinegar, stir. Place in fridge for 30 minutes or until slightly solidified (it should be syrupy enough to coat your finger). Add in the rest of the ingredients and mix. Pour into a Jello mold of your choosing, refrigerate 4-6 hours. Serve plain, or with a saucer of mayonnaise if you’re raunchy, and if you really want it to scream “salad,” on top of a flat bed of green lettuce.

The Weekly+ Recap

• Started Eating Like Royalty for paid subscribers on Patreon, here and elsewhere, with Princess Diana was the first of the new monthly series. Finally, vegetables take the main stage.

• I was lucky enough to visit with the cast of Next Level Chef Season 4 in LA! Met up at All Flavor No Grease for some insanely good shrimp quesadillas and gumbo: beautifully spiced. I’ll be back there again and again. If you’re not already following folks like Bobby (@retrorecipeskitchen), Megan (@homemade.home.megan) and Ocho (@allflavornogrease), you really should. Hanging with them was a lot of fun, and it was genuinely comforting to be around people with similar levels of intensity about what they do.

• I didn’t just eat Echo Emerald Salad, I ate like FDR for an entire damn day of shrimp wiggles, Haitian Libations and reverse martinis.

• My Eating Like a First Lady series is off to a hell of a start, too: Jackie Kennedy and Nancy Reagan. You can find those on Instagram, TikTok and YouTube. Who should I do next?

Stay fun out there,

-Bennett