Sunday, August 10, 2008

The Jell-O Salad


So, our little cousin lily got blessed this Sunday and there was a family get together afterwards. I got a food assignment and guess what it was? Yep, Jell-O salad.
Let me explain something right here.

I don't like Jell-O salad.
I don't eat Jell-O salad.
I certainly have never made Jell-O salad.
Jell-O salad scares me.

I realize that yes I am Mormon and yes, I live in Utah. Two factors that should guarantee a person who is all about the Jell-O salad. Well, there are exceptions to every rule, and Rob and I are definitely that.
Rob called me and told me the bad news and then started researching on the internet how to make it and what is in it. He came to no conclusions, but bookmarked a few for me. He told me there was one from Martha Stewart that looked good. I went to that page and it was a recipe for Jell-O shooters. I should have known.
I toyed with the possibility of making the grossest, Mormon-y concoction I could think of, just for fun (think shredded carrots, coconut, lime flavored Jell-O
, red hots.) Some of those ideas came from the Jell-O we were presented with at our last ward Christmas party. It, and I swear I am not making this up, was a square of lime Jell-O mixed with something creamy, resting on a bed of lettuce (yes, it was served as our salad course!) and as a festive coup de grace, topped with red hots. We took a picture of it and it is saved on my phone, if anyone wants a copy, let me know, I will send it to you. It is one of my treasured cell phone pics. (I don't know how to upload pics from my phone or I would) It was reminiscent of Jell-O served at our Aunt's house every Christmas Eve, if any of you have some good memories of Aunt Bev's creativity, please post them in the comments.
Anyway, I decided to go with traditional. Therefore it was to include: canned fruit, cool whip, and mini marshmallows. I made it orange in flavor and included tapioca and mandarin oranges. Mary (Rob's Aunt) kind of hinted that it would be for a lot of people, so i decided to double the recipe, since it stated that it served 8. While mixing, Rob was watching with amusement and i told him that I doubled it and why and he looked at my giant bowl of stuff and said with incredulity, "for 8 what???" We don't know the answer to that question, but whatever they are, they are large and they like their Jell-O salad.
At the get together, we noticed that my dish had rivals. Two to be exact. One was red and the other was green. I was sorry to see that my orange was not disappearing as fast as the other two. Who knew that orange was not the most popular of the Jell-O salads?
I told Mary that she was in trouble for giving me Jell-O salad. Before she asked why, she told me that I am in trouble that trumps anything else, as I allowed Rob to have a red U of U painted along with our house numbers on the curb. Mary is the Aunt that owns the house we are leasing and eventually buying (if we like it, and we do so far). Mary is also a big BYU fan. Rob's reason for doing that were two-fold. He wanted o
ur new Utah Valley neighbors to know how we stand around here right away, and also to ensure that Mary never wants her house back.
She told me that I may just have Jell-O salad as my assignment for the rest of my life for that.

*shudder*






Scout liked it, at any rate

10 comments:

Anonymous said...

Jell-o salad, hee hee. I wouldn't know how to make it either. The funniest part is that they needed 3 Jell-o salads. Seriously? Either there were A LOT of people there, or they really like their Jell-o salad! The only Jell-o that Aunt Bev made that sticks out in my mind is the lemon flavored one with red hots. One of my favorite memories of Christmas Eve dinners at her house were the banana candles she would make for everyone. Remember those? A banana standing up in a ring of pineapple with a marachino cherry as the flame? I'll always remember those.

I also love your way of letting the neighborhood know where you stand. Painting the UofU logo on your curb! Way to alienate all your neighbors! I love passive aggresive rebellion like that.

Anonymous said...

The above comment was left by me, Sue

Anonymous said...

Hehe, I was telling my coworkers today about your adventures with Jell-o salad, and they were like "Well, she hasn't tried this one yet!!!" Strawberry Jell-o topped with cream cheese and pretzels. I almost puked. Pretzels are the Neil Young of food. We miss you guys already!

Love B.

Eliza said...

Hey now, it seems that I vaguely remember some red jello with sweetened condensed milk on top from my Freshman year at BYU. That stuff was good, was it not?

Emily said...

Sue-
We guffawed at the 3 salads too, a high percentage at that get together. I totally remember the banana candles. I think it is cute she worked so hard to be creative.
Passive rebellion!!!!!!!!!!
Good stuff.

B-
Rob totally hates pretzels too!!!! I swear, you two are like two peas in a nasty pod.

Eliza-
I don't remember that Jello, who used to make it? I will admit to not having the same fear of Jello if it is plain (no canned fruit!) with whipped cream on top (not cool whip). So that sounds like something that might be ok. Why don't I remember it?

Anonymous said...

Pretzels are the Neil Young of food? B you crack me up! You really should quite giving us this type of information. Who knows how we are going to use it in the future.
Sue

Anonymous said...

Crap Sue, I probably should keep my mouth shut. Lock me in your guest room with only pretzels to eat and my coworker Pauline, and I will do anything you want to get out. Pauline is worse than Neil and Nicolas and Shania put together. BTW Em, I still love the part of that meal where we were all standing in line and you were talking to Robs aunt (Mary?) and telling her that you needed to get rid of that salad because you didn't want to take it home, so she turns to me and says something like "Here, they don't want to take this home with them" and puts a huge scoop on my plate (I only wanted a little!). And then when I pawned it off on Scout, she totally wasn't fooled! That was also one of my favorite parts of that trip.
B

Eliza said...

Do you remember that boy who was Jared and Michael's friend whose name started with an M? Like Marco or Mitch or something. You went on a date with him once (you were wearing a blue corduroyish dress maybe?) and the jello had something to do with him or his mom or that date. All I remember is that we made it a lot after that. But it was safe jello without any surprises.

Emily said...

Huh. I remember a friend Brian and a friend Tyler. I remember going out with one of their friends at least once, we got lost in a corn maze and I remember being lost in there with him and thinking, "wow, we have ABSOLUTELY NOTHING in common" I can't remember his name for the life of me, but M names don't seem right, remember that guy? We stayed at his house in Nevada and his sister's room had like a flower garden painted on the walls. He also got engaged to a girl he knew for 2 weeks. She was kind of dumb. Maybe the Jello guy was someone else. Did I eat the Jello on the date?

Jenn said...

Okay...you call yourself a Mormon!! J/k. I'm not even Mormon and I have a horribly offensive Jello recipe that calls for fruit, and cool whip -- courtesy of my mom. Now if you really new what Jello was made from you wouldn't even eat the "safe" kind. Lol!!! Hope you guys are doing well.

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