One of my cousins handed on this recipe once. I sometimes wonder how I was born into my family; I ran away from Midwest cooking in college and never looked back.
However, you can have my lefse when you pry it out of my cold dead hands. Every culture needs a good flatbread.
You got it, sister.
My family was so Minnesotan they actually made some kind of mayonnaise-based yellow dressing to go on the Jello.
I think the Snickers salad was invented after I left, though. As a kid I’m sure I wouldn’t have passed that up.
I still recall ambrosia and glorfied rice fondly, but I’m pretty indifferent to Jello salads.
IIRC, we used the thin-stick pretzels. Fry butter to remove the water, add a little sugar and pretzels. It’s been a long time since I made it. so I’d need to check. If only I’d read this thread sooner I could have taken it to the church easter brunch!
The problem here is with terminology. “Salad,” in certain circles, seems to mean not a vegetable-based dish, but anything with small chopped pieces of stuff mixed together. I think if Pretzel Jello Salad were named Salty Sweet Delight or Poor Man’s Cheesecake, it would be less maligned. It’s not an everyday food, and no one is under the illusion that it’s healthy. It’s dessert.
I’ve never heard of frying the pretzels. I break them up, mix with softened butter and sugar, and bake to form the crust. Then I try not to eat half the crust away while it’s cooling. Mmmmmmm.
In my family, the green has to have sliced pimento-stuffed olives and chopped sweet pickles in addition to celery, while orange has canned mandarin slices, cubed carrots (frozen, bien sur) and crushed pineapple bits.
Apparently, as long as the food colour-coordinates with the Jell-O, it’s fair game. 
(Note: This is not to suggest I eat or enjoy Jell-O salad in any form… the foodie police would come and take away my special decoder ring and Lagostina cookware if I was to eat Jell-O pudding, except perhaps if it was strictly for ironic purposes)
In some families, mini marshmallows are mandatory on Jell-O salads and sweet potatoes. Oddly, these folks were appalled to see me order a grilled-chicken chef salad with BBQ sauce instead of salad dressing, in a restaurant.
In my generation’s T-giving tradition, the sweet potatoes are baked in chunks with a little butter, then topped with blue cheese and chopped pecans. Thanks, Nigella!
Don’t feel too badly; I’ve lived in the Midwest since I was 2 years old, and the only thing mentioned so far that I’ve ever eaten is Chicago-style pizza, which, well, doesn’t fall in the same category.
Around here, the two major ones are the chip butty and the crisp sandwich.
Chip butty: Butter two slices of white bread, put fresh hot chips in between them (not potato chips - big old Irish chips, from a chipper), eat.
Crisp sandwich: Butter two slices of white bread, crush a packet of cheese-and-onion crisps (this time I do mean potato chips), pour them on one slice of bread, put a huge dollop of mayonnaise on the other slice to keep your crisps in place, form into sandwich, eat.
Keep a defibrillator handy.
Ah, my Mom used to make that from time to time. We kids really liked it. It IS pretty doggone good.
I grew up on that stuff! Zyada says she did too!
Best of all, now that you’ve reminded me, bananas are on sale! <adds nanners to the list>
Clearly there should be a support group for this bio/geographical confusion.
We need a “salad” only dopefest, stat! 
It’s more southern than midwestern but I make a pretty good pickled peach mold. It’s lemon jello mixed with miracle whip, chopped pecans, diced (homemade) pickled peaches with their juice. Quite tasty, goes very well with salty country ham.
I love banana pudding too with real Nilla wafers.
The neighbor boy’s evil stepmother once told him he couldn’t have anymore potato chips until he finished his Snicker Salad.
With the assistance of reading this thread, for the first time in my life I have achieved multiple orgasms. (I’m a male).
I’m typing this before the keyboard crusts up.
Oh lord. I don’t know if I can handle that. The only things in this thread I have even HEARD of are deep dish pizza and ambrosia. I had ambrosia once, on vacation in Hawaii, when I was a little kid and found it amazing. I always wanted to have it again, but I don’t think I’ve even seen it a single time since then. But it obviously made quite the impression on six year old me. My mom would have gouged out her own eye before she served me a dish with marshmallows (which we had in the kitchen solely for the occasional hot chocolate).
y’all are making me really glad that my midwestern mother was more than happy to cede kitchen duties to my Asian dad.
They’ve got it in the deli case at every single Meijer’s in the universe.
I did that once; thought I was being original. How do you get a consistent . . um . . consistency throughout the jello? When I made it, there was a layer of regular-textured jello on top and something like firm jello-flavored applesauce on the bottom, even though I had stirred it around pretty good.
I really hope you mean a mold.