There goes your image of me...

[rivka]

I made Jello tonight. For the first time in my life.

It's not the Jello of my youth, because it's lacking in canned "fruit cocktail." (My mother was a serious cook, and therefore never employed mini marshmallows.) It does have canned pears and banana slices, though.

It would never have occurred to me to make Jello, except that Alex suggested that she could bring some to school to share with the friends on her birthday. When I expressed surprise, she and Michael both informed me that they like Jello. I never knew. So we bought some, and then Michael got sick and it seemed that it would be a kindness to make something that would slip easily down his sore throat.

So, Jello. In our fridge. But I swear I draw the line well before Chef Boy-Ar-Dee canned ravioli.

Comments

[txanne.livejournal.com]

I used to remind my mother of which variety of Awful Canned Glop to buy by singing the commercials. Uh-oh, Spaghetti-Os! Thank goodness for Chef Boy-Ar-Dee!

(even now when I'm deathly ill, Chef BAD, hur hur, is all that keeps body and soul together.)

[carbonel]

I rather like Jello. But not with anything in it, just plain.

I'm embarrassed to admit that I also like Chef Boy-Ar-Dee canned ravioli, though I haven't bought it for years. When I did cook (okay, heat) it, I added garlic and oregano. It was comfort food, despite not being a food of my childhood.

[redbird]

I bought Jello this afternoon and have already eaten some.

It's medicinal.

It's medicinal because I'm not happy with how easily my fingernails break, and decided some gelatin might help. Worst case, it does nothing, and julian_tiger and I have had a different kind of snack for a bit.

[bcholmes.livejournal.com]

But what is your position on Kraft Dinner?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

We buy an organic no-artificial-anything version called Annie's Mac. Alex loves it, and Michael sometimes eats it too. I can't stand the stuff. But I didn't grow up on Kraft Dinner - my mother made macaroni and cheese from scratch, and hers was really good.

I suspect that it needs to have been a childhood food.

[cantkeepsilent.livejournal.com]

"If I had a million dollars, we wouldn't have to eat Kraft Dinner."
"But ... we WOULD eat Kraft Dinner."
"Of course we would! We'd just eat MORE!"

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

I have the Giant brand Shells and Cheese. I've tried the Annie's Mac and I didn't think it tasted very good.

[mjlayman.livejournal.com]

Ewww, jello. The nurses kept convincing me to eat it when I couldn't eat and it came back up so many times I can't even think of eating it anymore.

[lizzibabe.livejournal.com]

oh I love Jello. I didn't eat it much as a child, but I get sick, and all I want is Black Cherry Jello.

I do, however, nurse a mild craving for Spaghetti-Os with weenies that I indulge occasionally.

[eeyorerin]

When I was really depressed last fall I was pretty much subsisting on canned ravioli.

And now I am feeling better, so I am now wondering what I was thinking. (Well, I wasn't.)

[selki.livejournal.com]

Sometimes I get Jello when my nails are doing poorly (e.g., at a salad bar), and sometimes I get pho. Happily, I like both.

[rms10.livejournal.com]

Oh, yes, Black Cherry jello is the BEST.

And hot jello (i.e. before it sets) is also great when you're sick. Mmm, hot jello.

[aloha-moira.livejournal.com]

I ate a LOT of Chef Boyardee ravioli as a child, as well as Dinty Moore Beef Stew (the kind with visible hunks of fat congealing at the top of the can). I'm not sure how palatable I'd find it now, but I do still like Spaghetti-Os when I'm camping. I recently had a similar conversation about Pop-Tarts... in college I ate a box of the lower-calorie cinnamon ones every other day or so and now I cannot imagine enjoying them.

But there's absolutely nothing wrong with plain Jell-O!

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

My image of you is UTTERLY compatible with your making jello with fruit in it because you find out your family members like it.

[ex-serenejo.livejournal.com]

Oh, and Chef Boyardee ravioli is okay, but the real shit is the spaghetti and meatballs. Oh, yeah, baby.

[dornbeast.livejournal.com]

Seconded. She made jello because she loves her family. That's about as rivka as it gets.

[klwalton.livejournal.com]

I *love* Jello. Lime with sliced bananas in it is my favorite, and mom would always make it for me when I was poorly. That and poached eggs with toast soldiers.

I also love Spaghetti-Os (although I haven't actually eaten them in years, but they were always a part of the care packages I sent Danny when he was in Iraq).

[ailbhe]

We never put fruit in jelly. Ever, as far as I know. Terrible thing to do to innocent fruit.

But we definitely made and ate jelly, often with ice-cream, throughout my childhood, and in particular when people with sore throats are finding it hard to swallow water. It's probably the easiest "cooking" a child can do, and the earliest. Well, that and boiled eggs. Not together.

[ewein2412]

when I was pregnant with Mark, I craved jello. It is the only thing I ever craved. I could eat a whole made-up packet of it in one sitting; I got to the point where I could do all kinds of creative things with it, with fruit and cream etc., and didn't even have to look at the directions any more.

I haven't eaten it much since. But I sometimes wish I could recapture how *delicious* it seemed to me at the time.

[redbird]

Does all pho work, or is it specific kinds based on what meat they use?

[rivka.livejournal.com]

Jello and ice cream?! Huh. I wouldn't have imagined that.

Fruit went into Jello because, in the culture of my youth, Jello could play the role of a side dish rather than a dessert. Kind of like sane modern people might treat a tossed salad. I remember that at church suppers they would divide up the last names by alphabet to assign dishes, and one category would always be "salad or Jello."

Alex cut up the canned pears and bananas with a butter knife. She was so incredibly proud of having a "cutting job," and also helping Dad when he was sick.

[janetmk.livejournal.com]

In seventh-grade home ec I failed utterly at the assigned jello-making task. I was traumatized. Lesson learned: read instructions on package.

I've made jello only twice since then--before having a colonoscopy when jello is the only solid allowed.

My sister makes a yummy lime jello and cream cheese concoction.

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Go Alex! Actually helpful, not just playing helping!

We used to have jello (which we called jelly, which led me to a truly disgusting image of peanut-butter-and-jello sandwiches when I started to read American books, ugh) with banana slices in, and also with ice-cream, and also at the bottom of a trifle. But I have never had it as a salad, and hope I never do.

Redcurrants are so strong in natural pectin that if you stew them with sugar and a tiny bit of water and then put them into a dish they will set exactly like jello. So as an adult who naturally feels that jello is... is... um... what, low class? Gosh. Anyway, for years if I've wanted to make trifle I've done it with a layer of stewed redcurrants.

So why do we desipse jello anyway? Where did this come from? When did it start? My grandmother didn't despise it, and if it was possible to have a purely snobbish reaction against anything she would have. So it must be a relatively new thing I absorbed as something nice people either don't do or are embarrassed about doing later. Did Jello suddenly become embarrassingly declasse in the eighties?

All those redcurrants, all those years, stripped in the service of an invisible and unexamined snobbery -- I like blackcurrant jello. Gah. Mind you, I like stewed redcurrants too, and I like stripping them off their little vines. But I also like stirring the jello cubes. Go figure.

[janetmiles.livejournal.com]

Taking a minority viewpoint, here, it seems: there is not a damn thing wrong with Jell-o (I prefer it as dessert, rather than as side dish, though), and I commend you for making it for your family.

[(Anonymous)]

In my middle-class, Midwest upbringing in the '60s and '70s, jello-as-side-dish featured sufficiently prominently that for my wedding shower, my aunt gave me a fancy jello mold, and seven handwritten jello recipes. Let's see (consults memory): the yellow jello with applesauce and little cinnamon candies; lime jello with coleslaw (minus the dressing - basically shredded cabbage and carrots); cherry jello with pears and banana slices; orange jello with mandarin oranges, maraschino cherries and little marshmallows...