Surprise jello

A friend called me tonight and said she wanted to bring something over. I gave her the directions to my house and there in her hands was a glass dish of stripedy jello! We have been messaging about this recipe for a few weeks now....and I procrastinate, but Angie doesn't! She is a little powerhouse and a giver and because I would not get it together and make the recipe, she did it herself and brought it to me.

Angie's been reading my blog and saw the Jello Chronicles section. She has this beautiful recipe for striped jello that her mother used to make and now she makes it for her son. And it makes her really excited! She brought it to us and stood there bursting, so we all sat down to have some.

It is delicious.

Thank you Angie. I know this really was a labor of love for us. Let's see....6 hours making a jello dish then driving across town to deliver it.....when you already work full time and have some huge challenges in your life right now. Thank you so much. We love you and love that you are the kind of person who gets excited to bring us your jello recipe. How fun and caring.  For lots of reasons, it's a treasure from you.

Here is the recipe as Angie wrote it for me:


Warning: need to plan for about 10 minutes each hour for approx 6 hours in order turn out perfect. Will save little bit of time if put the dish in freezer before start so it can harden first layer quicker, it is always the layer taking longest.


1- (3oz)pkg. each of the following jello flavors: 
Black Cherry, Cherry, Lime, Lemon, Orange, Orange Pineapple, Strawberry

1- can sweetend condensed milk

Mix black cherry jello with 3/4 cup boiling water & 3/4 cup cold water. Stir well. Place in 9x13 inch glass pan & refrigerate untill well set. 


Mix cherry jello with 1/2 cup boiling water & 1/2 cup cold water & 1/2 cup sweetened condensed milk. 
Stir well & cool, place on top of first layer & chill untill well set.

Continue layering jello, making sure previous layer is well set & mixture you are adding is cool. Even number layers are creamy.

When done you will have a beautiful 7 layer giggley jello everyone I have make if for has loooved. You end up with the cherry, lemon & orange-pineapple layers being creamy. Serve scoop of cool whip and yummy. 

I have experimented with changing the flavors of jello and found that the grape is good in replace of strawberry and if you can find it the berry blue is a good layer when creamy.

Get Real

Okay this is interesting. Maybe...my entertainment value perceptiveness may be a little off lately due to blandness.  ;)

Cool Whip is a brand of imitation whipped cream named a whipped topping by its manufacturer. It is used in North America as a dessert topping and in some no-bake pie recipes. It is generally described as "non-dairy" as it contains no cream or milk and no lactose; however, it does contain the milk derivative casein. -Wikipedia

If you believe Wikipedia....people write all kinds of explanations on there and you never know if it's fact or not.  I know....cynical. I'm becoming more and more disestablishmentarianist in my midlife. ha!

Here is an article on everything you really didn't want to know about Cool Whip in Wired Magazine. Scary.

It says that one of the lesser ingredients in Cool Whip is:

Sorbitan Monostearate

Chemists call this stuff synthetic wax, and it's sometimes used as a hemorrhoid cream. It's one of the magical substances that keep Cool Whip from turning to liquid over time in the fridge.

Disgusting. But it's so perky and light that we just keep topping everything with it.

I think I'm going to go real people. Real whipped cream! (after I use the 2 containers of Cool Whip in my freezer)

 

Yeah...jello

I am running out of interesting jello combinations.

Raspberry jello with very cherry fruit cottontail  was kind of a hit. My little nephew ate it up! When Hannah was very little, I told her we had fruit cocktail for dinner. When she saw it, with it's fluffy white mini marshmallows standing out to her little kid eyes, she called it fruit cottontail. It's been called that in our family ever since. My 4 year old nephew was watching me put in the fruit cocktail and I called it cottontail. He looked up at me with a smile and I said, oh yeah, here are the cottontails. And I poured in some mini marshmallows. He laughed...I love it when little kids get my jokes.

Also very popular from the week, was a poke cake I made for the youth girls who are having their small group here during the summer. I made a strawberry cake from a mix, then poked little holes all over it, poured over a small box of raspberry jello, made according to directions, let it chill in the refrigerator, then topped it with Cool Whip.

Did you know there is watermelon jello? I was leery of it at first but when I poured in the hot water, the aroma was exactly like watermelon Jolly Ranchers! I made 2 layers, which was a mistake. The bottom layer was regular jello. For the top layer I mixed in a little bit of Cool Whip to make a foamy layer. (I am really debating lately whether Cool Whip is a food product at all. It's nondairy. hmmm, then what IS it? Discuss amongst yourselves if you wish.) Watermelon with dairy does not go over well. (even though it is not dairy at all) It's like drinking a glass of milk (or non milk?) while sucking on a watermelon Jolly Rancher. Makes me shudder.

I just made another poke cake for tomorrow's small group. It is a yellow cake with lots of peach chunks mixed in, then I poked it and poured over peach jello. I will top it with something completely out of the range of real food, but light and creamy so we eat it, tomorrow.

....how boring is this anyway? There are things going on in my life. The most meaningful and/or hilarious are not mentionable in public however. Not that they are off color, just not things to share publicly. So....that's boring too really. *mouthing the word "Wow" dramatically*

Lazy days of summer

Well everyone went to the ball game, but Charles and I stayed home. The weather has been HOT lately (108 today) and we've been busy almost every evening. When we were trying to decide how many cars we needed to take the girls and all their friends to the ballpark downtown, Charles looked at me and said, "I wish we didn't have to go, I'm so tired. I'm just going because you want to go." 


I said, "I don't want to go! I thought you did."


So we didn't go. And it was a good decision.


We floated in the pool for a long time and talked. The water got a little too chilly after the sun went behind the wall, and we came in to eat some dinner. Feeling too relaxed to cook, we ate lunchmeat sandwiches and some jello I made today. I am so into jello lately....craving it. It's gotten hot here so maybe that is why. It's so refreshing and perky. ;) 


The jello of the day today was orange jello with pineapple, mandarin oranges and bananas. I topped mine with a little squirt of canned whipped cream and it tasted like a dreamsicle. Yesterday we came home from a church concert and devoured the grape jello with pears I had made the night before.


Today when one of my daughters opened up the fridge, she shouted, "Jell O!" It has really been a hit. I think you'll be hearing more jello ideas as the hot summer days march by. And if you have any jello ideas, send them my way!