Tag: Jell-O Recipe

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Pineapple-Rhubarb (sp)Ring

It’s been a long time coming this year, but spring is finally here. My rhubarb erupted out a few weeks ago. It is almost ready for using. I started assembling all of my favorite rhubarb recipes and came across this gem. Pineapple-Rhubarb (sp)Ring.

Pineapple-Rhubarb sp(Ring). Is another one of great-grandma’s red Jell-O mold recipes. I’m becoming oddly fond of these.

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Once a week, we gather with a group of friends to do pub trivia. Our group ranges in ages from late 20’s to mid-70’s and has everything in between. This ensures that we have a wide base of knowledge across generations. It means we can answer most questions.

Except sports. We’re really not good at sports.

“Put the following basketball players in order from shortest to tallest.”

Most of us had heard of one or two of the names on the list.

“Which ones of these quarterbacks have won the Heisman Trophy?”

(Quarterbacks qualify to win that award, right?)

We excel on questions about pop music. One of our dearest friends can tell you what the number one song was on the day you were born.

There is a charming older man on our team who knows world history, US history, geography, and music before about 1985. When we were new to the team, we asked if he was sure about an answer. “Yeah, I was there,” he said. We went along with his answer. He was right.

Another question came up on a different day. “I was there.” He said. Again, he was right.

Now, whenever he is sure of the answer, someone says “Doug was there.” This is the response to him knowing about everything from Washington crossing the Potomac to which President had which number of children to where Steve Jobs was conceived. It doesn’t matter what it is. If Doug is sure, he must’ve been there.

Pineapple-rhubarb Ring

The other night at trivia, a question was asked about when Hong Kong was returned to Chinese rule.

“Oh!” I exclaimed excitedly. “I was actually there.”

Doug knew the answer, but I really was there.

In 1997, I applied for and got the opportunity to teach English and travel for 6 weeks in China. I was in college. I majored in International Relations. It was an obvious opportunity. It was my second time on an airplane. I knew no one.

Before we went into mainland China, we spent a few days in Hong Kong for some training and to assimilate a little bit. We needed bonding time as a group and time to recover from jet-lag before embarking on the teaching part of the trip.

Everywhere we went in Hong Kong, there were red and gold banners celebrating their reunification with China. They were in Chinese, so I couldn’t read them, but that’s what our translator told us. The atmosphere seemed festive, but that might’ve just been the energy of the city.

While there, we walked around the night market. We ate breakfast at a place that had an enormous butter sculpture of a dragon. To get into our private dining room at a restaurant, we had to walk through the kitchen where they were in the process of slaughtering chickens.

It was in Hong Kong that I had dim sum for the first time. I ate a chicken foot.

When we arrived at our destination in China, I was willing to accept the explanations of the food we were given.

“What is this?”

“Traditional Chinese dish. Eat, eat.”

“But what is it?”

“Meat. Eat, eat very good.”

“What kind of meat?”

“Oh, I do not know name. Eat, eat, very good. Traditional Chinese dish.”

What in the world does any of this have to do with Pineapple-Rhubarb (sp)Ring?

Pineapple-Rhubarb Ring

I ate pineapple in China. I experienced new foods and tried familiar foods in new ways. It may have been part of the catalyst for trying all of these recipes.

I realize, of course, that not everyone can travel to Hong Kong during a pivotal year to have the opportunity to say “I was there” 22 years later at a bar doing trivia. And you can’t go back in time to say “I was there” when this salad was first introduced. But you can feel like you were there by making Pineapple-Rhubarb (sp)Ring to go with your first grilled dinner of the season.

When someone asks you, “What is this delicious thing I am eating?” You can answer “Traditional American food. Very good. Eat. Eat.”

The Recipe:

Recipe source

Pineapple-Rhubarb Ring

A delicious sweet and tangy red molded salad to brighten up any spring table
Print Recipe Pin Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Setting Time 3 hours
Total Time 3 hours 15 minutes
Course Side Dish
Cuisine American
Servings 8

Ingredients
  

  • 1 can Pineapple Tidbits about 2 1/2 cups
  • 2 cups Fresh Rhubarb cut into 1 inch chunks
  • 1/3 cup Sugar
  • 1/2 cup Water
  • 2 pkgs Cherry flavored gelatin 3 oz size (or 1 large)
  • 1 TB Lemon Juice
  • 1/2 Cup Pecans Broken

Instructions
 

  • Drain pineapple and reserve syrup. (Ideally, you'd drain it into a glass measuring cup that has room enough to add more)
  • Combine rhubarb, water, and sugar into a small sauce pan; cover and cook until tender. This will require more time for slightly older rhubarb than for freshly picked young rhubarb.
  • Drain thoroughly, reserving syrup. (Add it to the pineapple juice. This is why I told you to make sure the cup is bigger than you'd need.)
  • (And this is where the measuring cup part comes in.) Add enough water that combined syrups and water equal 3 ½ cups.
  • Heat to boiling. (At this point just throw it in the microwave. Don't bother getting another dish dirty)
  • Add gelatin and stir to dissolve.
  • Add lemon juice and cool.
  • Chill until partially set. (If you are lucky, this instruction applies to you as well as the gelatin. But I usually use this time to get other things done, which is why my gelatin gets too hard at this point. It's smart to set a timer for about a half hour.)
  • Fold in rhubarb, pineapple, and nuts. (It's like 007 instructions. "One Jell-O salad. Folded not stirred.)
  • Pour into a 6 cup ring mold. (Let's be honest here, you can pour this into anything that'll hold 6 cups or even into a bunch of smaller containers. Don't let these people tell you how to mold your salad.)
  • Chill until firm. (See instruction above on chilling.)
  • Unmold onto greens. Serve with mayonnaise. (Really, do not serve this with mayonnaise. I mean, if that's what you do, fine, but I prefer anything that is not that. Sweetened whipped cream, vanilla sauce, rum sauce, pineapple sauce. Just not mayonnaise unless you really like that sort of combination. Or do the hardcore rebellion thing and use no sauce at all.)
Keyword Jell-O Salad, molded salad, Rhubarb, side dish

And you can trust me on this. I was there.

If you liked this recipe, you may also want to try Something Different Rhubarb Salad, Rhubarb Dream Dessert, and Secret Rhubarb Dessert.

Pinterest graphic for Pineapple-Rhubarb Ring
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Visions of Sugar Plums and Rosettes

I just had my oldest bring me a piece of fudge.  This should be a clue as to what you have in store this week.  It is Christmas Cookie Week!!!! 

If you didn’t get in on the Christmas cookie countdown last year, you can read about it starting here.  I’ll link to the original posts on the bottom.

When the boys were littler I remember thinking that it was going to be a great tradition to read them “The Night Before Christmas” on Christmas Eve. After midnight mass (really around 8 PM), they got to open one present (always pajamas so they looked cute on Christmas morning).  The plan was that we would all change into our pajamas and sit down on the couch and read those magical words. 

Now, I don’t know if you have spent a lot of time with small children already up past their bedtimes on Christmas Eve. I have since learned all of our limits better.  By 9 o’clock on Christmas Eve after making sure everything has resembled perfect for weeks, I’m not in any mood to try to hold wriggling children close while trying to read to them over their demands to know when Santa is coming.  

 The poem usually gets read, or at least thought about, at some point during the Christmas season.  Between that, the Nutcracker, and the Sugar Plum tree in Shut-eye town, I have been asked what a sugar plum is many, many times.  I didn’t have an exact answer before now. 

Sugar plums, according to one of the two recipes I have for them is nothing more than a softly gummy candy made from applesauce, red hots, Jell-O and sugar boiled together and left to solidify after adding pecans.  The texture is sort of like what happens if you mix cornstarch with gelatin.  And even that doesn’t really describe it.  It’s that weird velvety feeling.  Softer and less sticky than a marshmallow.  The flavor is red.  

You may want to argue that red isn’t a flavor, but you are wrong.  It’s sweet, almost hot, somewhat fruity, kind of artificial.  Not much of anything exactly, but everything generally.  And most of all, nothing like a plum. (Go figure).  

The entire experience of this was weird, but in kind of a good way.  It’s experiential and sort of like the predecessor to modern molecular gastronomy.  I don’t expect Marcel Vigneron to be jumping at the chance to use this technique any more, but perhaps as a kid…

Speaking of kids…I just asked my kid to bring me a piece of Christmas memory.  A rosette.

While growing up, there was this cute little gift shop that would have an annual holiday open house.  This shop was adorable and sold lotions from Crabtree & Evelyn, funky jewelry, beautiful bowls and vases and home decor.  It was magical.  It was in this little old house across from the lake.

I know mom is going to correct me when I inevitably tell this wrong, but for the sake of a story, let’s just explore this vision a moment.  It’s nighttime, or at least dark.  Most of the buildings on the lakefront are dark and closed.  The parking lot for the bank is mostly empty.  The snow has been plowed up and there are mountains lining the street.

The air is crisp on our faces as we get out of the warm car.  Our breath is visible as we scurry into the warmth of the glowing lights of the shop.  The air is scented with cinnamon and mulling spices.  One of the counters has been cleared off and is draped with lace-trimmed linens. 

There is a buzz of excitement among the shoppers.  We stop to admire things on the porch.  We exclaim over the cunning little Snowbabies (they were brand new at the time).  

My sister and I make all the appropriate noises, but I am pretty sure we are both contemplating how fast we can get to the goodies.  Because we were both raised to be polite and good little girls, I am sure we murmured words of excuse and apology as we trampled sweet old women in our haste to the cookies.  The cookies…I’m sure there were all sorts of fabulous things.  It was that sort of place, but my favorite of all of them were the rosettes.  

Rosettes are some of the most delicate Christmas cookies.  They are fried with a special iron and sprinkled with powdered sugar.  Rosettes are crisp, but melty as you bite into them.  The powdered sugar gets all over everything, but it doesn’t matter. 

By the time the cookie was gone, my hot apple cider was cool enough to sip.  I remember picking out some special Santas to hang on our tree during some of those open houses.  I remember the smell, but most of all, I remember the cookies.

My sister and I have both gotten much older. I haven’t gone Christmas shopping with either her or my mom in ages.  Last Christmas or so, my sister called me when she was making rosettes.  This year, I returned the favor and sent her pictures of my work.

As I stood over the stove sacrificing my first few cookies to the Norse gods, I realized how much I miss making Christmas cookies with my family.  It’s bittersweet to know that my children may someday say the same thing about me.

The Recipes:

Sugar Plums

1 cup canned applesauce
1 TB red cinnamon candies

Bring to a boil and then stir in:
1 3 oz package of Strawberry Jell-O
1 cup of Sugar

Boil for 2 minutes.  Add red food coloring (optional) and 3/4 cup of nuts.  

Mix well and pour into a buttered loaf pan (9 x 5 x 3).  Chill overnight.

When firm, cut and roll in granulated sugar.  After 24 hours, sugar again if needed.  Make a week or so before you need them.  Keep in a tight closed pan.

If you liked this post and want to know more about what I made last year, check out last year’s Christmas cookie countdown:  Day 1, Day 2, Day 3, Day 4, Day 5, and Day 6,  (They might be out of order).

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Holiday Confetti Salad

When I was a very small child, my mom dressed me up in my blue and white polka-dot coat and took me to see Santa.  She did not go up to Santa with me, but my brothers did.  We sat on Santa’s lap and told him what we wanted for Christmas.  When we returned to my mom’s side, she took my brothers aside and asked them what I told Santa I wanted.  Disgustedly, my 4-year old brothers told my mom I wanted a blueberry birthday cake.

A picture of me ran in the paper that year.  I’m wide-eyed as I held up my knitted mitten to greet Santa.

40 years later, my eyes aren’t that wide.  I still wear blue and white polka dots.  I still have odd conversations with old men, although not usually while sitting on their laps. My brothers are still confounded by me, but less disgusted.  Any knitted mittens I wear now, I knit myself.  The request for blueberry birthday cake has become a request for much more practical things.  (And I’m adult now, I’ll eat blueberry birthday cake any time I want to, I don’t have to wait for Christmas.)

This is where it would be completely awesome for me to whip out my recipe for blueberry cake of some sort and tell you all that it makes Christmas dinner perfect, but, sadly, I don’t have that recipe in my collection.  What I do have, though, is Holiday Confetti Salad.

Doesn’t that just sound like a party in your mouth?

(Insert your favorite dad joke here about “throwing” this dish together or “tossing” the salad.  You know, because of “Confetti”.)

You know, when I think Christmas dinner, I don’t think about crown roast or fruitcake (although I have some of that sitting in sherry getting ready for Christmas), I just imagine cutting into a nicely molded congealed salad.  Holiday Confetti Salad does not disappoint.

Lime, celery, pineapple, and cherries combine with cream cheese and whipped cream to create a pale green cloud flecked with small red bits.  The Holiday Confetti Salad is quite festive looking, especially when garnished with more maraschino cherries and celery leaves.

I made this before I had proper molds, so the only pictures I have of this beautiful salad are in a glass bowl.  I’d love it if someone else made this and posted pictures for me to see.

The Recipe:

If you like this recipe, check out Fluffy Orange Salad, 24, 24 Hour Salad, Something Different Rhubarb Salad, and Blueberry Salad Mold.

 

 

 

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Tricky Orange Dessert

Since it’s October and Halloween is approaching, I thought it would be fun to present you with a series of seasonal treats.  You may have noticed this in the last few weeks with the Butterscotch Bars, the Ribbon Candy Bars, the Family Favorite Gingersnaps, and the Applesauce Donuts.  But you know, the saying is “trick or treat”, so it’s only fair if I present you with a very tricky sort of recipe.

This is not saying that the recipe is complicated to make.  I’m not actually sure that it is.

It’s not tricky in the way that the ingredients are hard to come by.  This recipe calls for things that you can find at any grocery store and even most gas stations.  

And I’m not going to tell you that this recipe is great and then it turns out like Egg Foo Yung.  I’m not that kind of mean.

This is another one of those recipes that is a list of very simple ingredients that can go very, very wrong like it did for me.

Ok, so here’s the thing.  In real life my job is communication.  I make sure that people are not only in the same book, but also on the same page.  I outline steps in a basic way realizing that the common sense and logic that seems obvious to me isn’t obvious to everyone else around me.  It is all based on experience.

This is why I can easily take a recipe that is supposed to be cake and make something similar to the original intention of the cake.  I have followed the process before.  I’m familiar with the steps that go into it and I understand which combinations of ingredients and techniques will produce a light and flavorful cake. 

When confronted, however, with ingredients that are not as familiar to me, my experience fails me.  My common sense is no longer common.  My logic takes me as far as it can.  I’m going to talk through my process so you can see how I got to my results.  Help me find the flaws in my logic.

The ingredients are 2 3 oz packages of orange Jell-O, 2 cups of water, 1 pint of orange sherbet and 1 can of mandarin oranges, but substitute frozen orange juice if you have no sherbet.  

All Jell-O recipes call for the cook to dissolve the Jell-O in boiling water. I boiled the two cups of water, poured it over the Jell-O powder and stirred until the Jell-O dissolved into the water.

Next, I stirred the sherbet into the hot Jell-O juice.  When that was mostly mixed, I added the can of drained oranges.  I stirred it all together.

That’s when the questions started coming in.  Was this supposed to go into the freezer or the refrigerator?  Did the Jell-O have enough hold to firm melted sherbet?  How could frozen orange juice impart similar flavor profiles as orange sherbet?   Sherbet is sweet and creamy.  Orange juice is acidic and stringent.

It seemed obvious that the frozen ingredients in the dessert implied that it belonged in the the freezer. So I froze it.

Thinking about this now, I realize that perhaps the ingredients were supposed to be layered.  Clear Jell-O with oranges on top of frozen sherbet in a mold would be beautiful.  Frozen orange juice still makes no sense.  The idea of biting into a chunk of frozen orange juice gives me canker sores.

Perhaps this was all supposed to go in a pie shell?

I served it.  We like oranges.  We like dessert.  Orange sherbet never lasts long at our house.  We didn’t care for Orange Dessert.  This sat in the freezer untouched after that first small serving.  The texture was weird.  The sum of the parts was greater than the whole.

If you have an idea of what I should’ve done to improve this recipe, please let me know.

The recipe:

Orange Dessert

2 3oz Packages Orange Jell-O
2 Cups Water
1 pt Orange Sherbet or 2 cans Frozen Orange Juice
1 can Mandarin Oranges

If you want these flavors without the confusion, try Fluffy Orange Salad and Old Movies.

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Fluffy Orange Salad and Old Movies

Ok, Silver Screenings, this one is for you.

Have you all met Silver Screenings?  I love their blog.  It’s funny and clever and does deep dives into some of my favorite old movies.  They didn’t even ask me to write this or even know that I’m doing this, but I’m sure they would appreciate it you clicked over and checked them out.  We bond over the classics.  Their stars probably ate some of the food I write about. 

Recently Ruth told me that she would love to see more Jell-O recipes.  Because I’m me, I happened to have this one ready to go in my archives.  As soon as you are done reading about this, make a nice big bowl of Jell-O and sit down and enjoy an old movie for a very vintage experience.  Just make sure your hair and lipstick are ready in case your husband comes home unexpectedly with his boss.  You know how these things work.

Fluffy Orange Salad.  It’s the hyper-pigmented fake orange creamy stuff dreams are made of.  It’s Florida sunshine and with a smattering of clouds. Light, fluffy clouds.  Let’s be honest, there is nothing healthy or wholesome about this “salad”.  It’s canned and processed and better than it should be.  I know it’s all artificial colors and flavors, but this isn’t bad stuff.  There are reduced fat and sugar options for all of the ingredients, which almost makes this qualify as health food…right?

I’m not sure exactly where great-grandma got this recipe.  Maybe it was part of a recipe exchange where they all typed out copies of their favorite recipes.  That’s the story I like.  I was intrigued by the name at the bottom “Pat Muchmore”.  My head is in a space today where I first thought perhaps someone named Pat Muchmore would do a movie with Stormy Daniels and hesitated before I Googled the name hoping for more information.  I’m guessing the 42 year old composer is not the author of this recipe, but I would like to imagine that the author of the bodice ripper is.  It’s like a novel in and of itself.  Iowa housewife secretly authors romance novels to escape her daily drudgery.

By now, I’m sure my poor mom is rolling her eyes and shaking her head at my silliness.  Let’s blame overtiredness and whiskey slush.  

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Memorial Day Rhubarb Jam

Yesterday was Memorial Day.  This is the day where we are supposed to remember those that not only served their country, but died for it.  And every year, on Memorial Day, I cry.  Sometimes it starts with thinking about the young, young men and women that don’t even have fully developed frontal lobes that sign up for the military.  Sometimes it starts with the parade.  Sometimes it isn’t even about the soldiers at all and is all about the traditions.

When I was young, I looked forward to Memorial Day weekend as the beginning of summer.  It not only meant that I could start wearing my white shoes to church, but it also meant that my grandparents were coming to visit. Every year, they would spent Memorial Day weekend at our house.  They would arrive in their Buick with suitcases, worn plastic bags full of kringla and chocolate chip cookies, and enough string cheese from the Star Dairy to tide us over for a few days.  In my memories, Grandma and Grandpa are younger than my parents are now.  They were full of energy and ready to take on projects. 

It wasn’t just because of us that they came up.  Every year, we’d head over to my Aunt and Uncle’s house to celebrate my young cousin’s birthday.  We’d head over to their house midday and eat delicious food.  I remember a black bottom banana cream pie and some sort of cheesecake.  I remember reading my cousin “The Very Hungry Caterpillar”.

When my grandparents were choosing their assisted living facility, they chose one that is close to her.  I wonder, as we pass Memorial Day, whether or not proximity reignited that old tradition of them seeing her on her birthday.

Every year, along with the birthday party, we would wake up on Memorial Day and eat breakfast at the Woolworth’s lunch counter.  From there, we would shop the sales downtown.  Stores would bring displays out to the sidewalk and people would mill about looking at everything.  There was always at least one bargain that was too good to pass up. 

It was from that tradition that I started the tradition with my children of diner breakfast on Memorial Day.  There was a place we went to in our old town that we liked to frequent.  As seems to be the case with me, while we eating our breakfast there one morning, we started talking to an oldtimer.  He explained to us that that building had been a Woolworth’s at one point in time, long before my time.  It seemed that everything was coming full circle.

But time changes everything.  My ex-husband decided that he wanted the boys on Memorial Day, which meant that my diner breakfasts with them stopped.  There just wasn’t enough time before they were picked up.  Another thing that makes me teary.  

It is through these endings that we find new beginnings.  We honor the past and its memories and traditions as we create our path going forward.  This year, in between diner lunch, and eyes welling up with tears, I picked rhubarb and dug through my recipe cache and made my first canned recipe of the year.  I figured it that it might be a good time to preserve some rhubarb for the months where I am longing for spring.

This beautiful red jam gets its color from Raspberry or Strawberry Jell-O.  I happened to have a package of raspberry left from when I made the Rhubarb Salad.  I had previously scorned the use of Jell-O to set jam, but it works.  The gelatin sets the the jam into a smooth spreadable texture that is firmer than I normally make my jam.  I used a hot water bath to seal my jars.  The recipe makes about 5 half pints.

The Recipe:

Rhubarb Jam

5 cups finely cut rhubarb
4 cups sugar

Heat slowly.  Boil 10 minutes.  Remove from hear.  Stir in 1 3 oz package of strawberry or raspberry Jell-O.  Ladle into jars and can in a hot water bath.

 

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Any Flavor (Raspberry)Pastel Party Pie

Our house has been busy lately.  We’ve had people in and out for the past month and a half.  Every guest needs to leave with a full belly.  The only exception was my husband’s brother’s family and that was because they were headed to Cracker Barrel for breakfast. (It is their natural habitat, you know.)

All of these guests give me good excuses to try out “new” recipes.  And the house really likes having visitors. It just seems happy when it’s full of people.

When my in-laws were here, I broke out the leftover Raspberry Pastel Party Pie.  It needed to get eaten up.  After I served the creamy pink creation (without the whipped cream that it should have), I was in the kitchen putting away the other leftovers.  My father-in-law entered the kitchen and pointed at the pie plate with his empty plate. “You know, you could give us this recipe.”  “Oh!  You like this one?  I’ll make sure you get it.”

Things being what they were on that occasion, I didn’t end up giving it to him, so I thought I would quickly post it so I can still look like the perfect daughter-in-law.

I used raspberry Jell-O to make this super easy pie.  Since it was my first time, I made it very plain, but it’s easy to make more exciting.  Adding raspberries would make it divine.  I can also imagine it with sliced  bananas, strawberry Jell-O, and strawberry ice cream.  Or maybe a gingersnap crust with orange jello, and pineapple sherbet?  Chocolate cookies with strawberry Jell-O for Valentine’s Day?  I bet there is even an option for layering it.  Really, you are only limited by your imagination.  You could even use unflavored gelatin and personalize it further.  I’m wondering how something like wine or beer would be in this concoction.

If you try this, please let me know in the comments.  I’d love to hear what combinations you come up with.

The Recipe:

For other recipes I’ve served to my parents-in-law, check out Blueberry Salad Mold, Oven Stew, and Extra Special Biscuits (but I put some figs and green onions in the ones I served them).

Jell-O and Ice Cream Pie recipe

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Blueberry Salad Mold for My Mother-in-Law

Food is my love language.  If I love you or am trying to impress you, I will cook for you. When I was first trying to date the man that is now my husband, I made him homemade pizza dough for his birthday.  A few days later, I invited him over for dinner and impressed him with jerk chicken.  He was maybe more impressed that I was under the sink replacing the faucet when he arrived, but he knew pretty quickly that he wasn’t going to let me get away.

I pay attention to people’s food preferences and dietary restrictions.  My Mother-in-law loves blueberries which means that when she’s coming to visit, I scour all of my recipes for the perfect blueberry dish to make for her. Usually it is some sort of dessert, but sometimes it’s as simple as homemade blueberry applesauce.

The last time they visited, I started menu planning a couple of days in advance to make. When I know guests are coming, I scour great-grandma’s recipes for something impressive to make.   A lot of times these recipes require some planning ahead and the Blueberry Salad Mold is no exception.

I decided to honor my Mother-in-law further by putting this salad into a copper mold that I found for a steal at the thrift shop.  It’s a fair question to ask why this would honor her.  You see, my Mother-in-law is the queen of thrift shopping.  Where there are bargains to be found, she is there.  Road trips with her mean stopping at every known thrift shop along the way, or so we tease her.  I’ve never been with her as she’s stopped, but I’ve heard stories.  Anyway, isn’t this a pretty copper mold?  

It has a little round loop on one side for hanging and I have the perfect spot for it.  Right above my sink with another piece from my Mother-in-law.

Back to this salad.  It’s sweet (obviously), a bit tart, and creamy and delicious.  As per usual, the kids were hesitant to try it because they are kids.  But it turned out to be a perfect accompaniment to the meal.  If I’m not careful I’m going to have to start rethinking my aversion to all things Jell-O.  There are still plenty of concoctions I’ve made that aren’t as pretty as they should be, like Frosty Lime Salad and Cooked Cranberry Salad, but even the strange ones like Zippy Beet Salad are not as bad as I originally expected.  And we all have to admit the Tropical Delight Salad was a hit.  

Someone please reassure me this doesn’t make me lose my cred.