Christmas, was Re: [Sca-cooks] Happy happy joy joy!!!

[letrada at yahoo.com]

Having survived the penance, I would like to make my confession and start the new year all forgiven and virtuous.

A while back there was some wailing and gnashing of teeth over the presence of Jello "salads" on the table at Thanksgiving.  Being possessed of a family that considers Jello to be a dessert and never an appropriate place to put marshmallows, I was amused.  I was smug.  I was complacent and felt myself safe from anything nastier than the occasional candied yam.

Well, this year for Christmas, my cousin's entire family joined us for Christmas dinner, including her mother-in-law, who brought... a layered jello thing: lime decorated with pineapple daisy shapes with maraschino cherry centers, an opaque lemon layer containing marshmallows and more pineapple (I didn't ask why it was opaque, I assume it had whipped cream-oid or cottage cheese or something in it) and plain cranberry jello for the bottom.  It not being enough to place this monstrosity on the dinner table, the fates decreed that I should be seated next to the woman who brought it, and who proceeded to urge me to take lots.  With a mumble about not caring for pineapple, I took a bit of the top layer.  Which had something crunchy in it.

To aid my apetite even further, she proceeded to tell me all about her recipe for upside-down cake, which involves covering perfectly innocent fruit in lime jello and marshmallows, then hiding the remains beneath cake batter.

The bowl in which Mom put the portion of the leftover "salad" she had to take ended up with a crack in it, too.  Coincidence?

So apologies to all for feeling smug at your expense.

Other than that it was fairly nice, and I scored a springform pan, a small ceramic casserole, and a cookbook for the gas grill I bought last fall.  Plus some non-cooking stuff like a carpenter's apron and a book on wiring.

Thank you all for a year of great info, recipes and silliness, and may next year see us all healthy and happy (N.B.: which includes being solvent, in case there was any doubt).

Dana/Ximena

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FROM   : Sue Clemenger ...
Mine was very nice, too, thank you, although the only cooking-related
thingy I got was an espresso maker from my sister and her husband ;-)

--Maire

Susan Laing wrote:

> (Ohhh - and my parents gave me a Sandwich Griller for Christmas as well as a
> hand-crafted-by-Dad bookcase so my Christmas has been BRILLIANT! - How's
> everyone else's gone?? :p)