Jell-o Salad, it's a Minnesota thing

Minnesotan's (and Lutherans) love jell-o salad with holiday meals. I grew up with grape jello that had pears in it and, for some odd reason, the middle of the jello mold was filled with mayo/salad dressing - this was served quite a bit over my younger years by my Protestant and Lutheran family. I always cringed at the mayo. But the grape jell-o with the pears? Oh yum - I know sounds strange, but the two flavors go so well together. I always made sure I got the edge of the jello to avoid the mayo. ;-) 

So, today, I thought I would make my Great Gram Dot Kiser and Grandma Hattie proud and have grape jell-o with the pears. (but no mayo - sorry Grams) with our Easter dinner. They probably rolled over in their graves, as I forgot to take the jell-o out of the fridg before it 'set' to put the pears in. Oops. So, I improvised and cut up the pears into bite size bits and just stirred up the jell-o with the pears (they're not supposed to be cut up, but the halves are to be placed evenly and decoratively around the jello mold). So, it's a lumpy jell-o salad, but sure tastes like it always did ;-) 

But, I am sure that my Lutheran and Protestant relatives, who rolled over in their graves twice, are blaming it on my being a Catholic for 37 years - we don't know the proper way to make jell-o salads cuz you just don't see a jell-o salad at many Catholic church suppers.   

Trust me, it tastes really very good. 

;-)

Up north and storms in the south

The problem of living in a county that is 30 miles long, is when a BIG weather system is moving across the southern half of the state and this long county is in the path, we are included in the warnings. Tornadoes in southern Washington county and our sirens will go off and we have blue skies up here and vice versa. The latest fiasco - a huge Winter storm warning was moving this way with the predictions of ginormous snow totals and for 2 days my phone kept beeping and giving storm update and warnings. Ermergerd, but it was getting annoying. The grocery stores were packed with people stocking up on salad, bread and milk (yep, got it from a reliable source - salad was being bought like crazy, they couldn't keep up). And, as my chocolate loving kindred spirit pointed out - the "fake news" of the major storm was the salad hoarding. She stated if she's going to be hunkered down with a blizzard, she's clearing out the bakery section. I'm with her!  Blizzard heading out way; hunkered down in a cozy warm home; do we choose salad or chocolate donuts to get through the storm? Oh, I am so going with the chocolate donuts. I can just picture Nancy and I sweeping our arms across the shelves in the bakery to prepare for the Winter storm as others are grabbing their salad fixings. Just that image caused me to belly laugh and crave a chocolate donut. So, here it is the day after the huge storm was being beeped and honked about and up here at the very northern tip of the county - we didn't even get a rogue snowflake. I am a bit envious, as we haven't had a really good blizzard in years. However, on the bright side, everyone in the area has salad to eat with their bread and milk and we don't have to shovel snow and with the cooler temps, the driveway mud is evaporating and all is well in the north country, er, county. And, since the roads are clear - I'm heading to the store for a chocolate donut. Hey, we've got to support our neighbors to the south who are all stranded with - salad.

 ;-)