Who didn’t grow up loving Jello and Jello Knox Blox? 

Remember the song from the Jello commercial –

♫ Watch it wiggle, see it jiggle. Cool and smoothy, Jello brand gelatin. Of all desserts you’ll love the one that tastes so light and makes such fun. Make Jello gelatin and make some fun. J-e-l-l-o!♫

It’s hard to imagine a life without Jello as a kid. My favorite was strawberry with bananas. My grandmother had a particular refrigerator tray that was a light blue aluminum pan, and that was what she made her strawberry jello in and then she added bananas to the chilling mixture. We couldn’t wait for it to set up so we could dig in. My mother came up with all kinds of desserts using Jello over the years; but it seems like you just don’t see it used in recipes as often now. I don’t even make the Jello salads anymore like I did back in the 70′s and 80′s. No one in my family ever ate them but me. I have an appetizer that has been a catering favorite for years — Garden Vegetable Terrine that has Lemon Jello in it and it’s delicious — kind of sweet, kind of hot and spicy recipe.

These days it seems like if we eat Jello we are sick or getting ready for some kind of medical test.

Well this particular gelatin recipe is made with Knox gelatin. End results I guess would be like Jello Knox Blox that we use to make for our kids. They really loved being able to pick up Jello and eat it with their hands; but these Jello Blox are for adults only. My sister tore this recipe from one of her magazine and put it in “to make” notebook so I copied it while visiting and thought why not try them out for my bunco group at my house last week. I’m sure this recipe was a Knox advertisement because it specified Knox unflavored gelatin.

♫ ”It wiggles, it jiggles, it’s fun for everyone”.♫

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What a comforting bowl of soup for a cold winter night.

I don’t know where you live in this world of ours, but whether you are having a warm sunny day or a cold chilly wintry evening, I think you will enjoy this soup.

Soup is one of my favorite dishes to make. Seems like you can throw just about anything in a pot and come up with a wonderful dish that will make your family or guest think you have slaved over a hot stove all day. Add a nice crusty bread and a beautifully dressed green salad and a soup becomes a fantastic meal. Potatoes, pasta, or rice can be added to soups or stews to make a simple pot of simmering vegetables hearty enough for anyone in your family who might say “no” to soup for dinner. I often think of “what would our pioneer mother’s have made for dinner”. I’m sure stews were often on their menus. Dad comes in with something he had shot while out tending the fields (??) and she adds it to the pot and then throws in any kind of root vegetables they may have in their cellar. I’m not sure I could live like that but I often think I would like to be a time traveler to go back and experience some of the things our forefathers lived through; but with one foot in the present.

Don’t you just love what you can do with a soup. You can serve a pumpkin tomato soup in small hallowed out pumpkins or you can put your soup in a beautiful soup tureen. There’s always dessert soups that are simple and delicious and will impress your guest when served in a martini glass.  At my daughter’s wedding back in October we had, as one of our hors doerves, a tomato bisque that was served in a tall shot glass with a grilled cheese triangle teetering over the top of the glass.  Now that was fun; the grilled cheese could either be eaten as is or dunked (I did) into the soup and then you could finish off the soup by a swift tilt of the head and down the soup. I also just posted a Crab and Corn Bisque from our Hawaiian feast weekend.

I did not have any sherry in my liquor cabinet and didn’t want the extra stop while shopping to pick it up so I lazily opted for the cooking sherry from the grocery.

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I’m a copycat but it’s worth it for this recipe.

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday season. Christmas came and went so fast and the New Year is here, and everyone is wanting to cut calories and food intake.

What are your New Year’s resolutions? Well when it comes to food I would like to do one vegetarian meal a week, fish at least 2 times a week (baked or pan fried), a main dish salad at least once a week, and then try and fill in the other days with healthier meals made with chicken and some pork. I think having salad is a perfect start to the new year.

What is it about a salad that is so refreshing even if it is loaded with tons of ingredients? I don’t know but I think most people feel like they are watching their calories when eating salad and that’s not always true.

A couple of years ago I gave up buying all those creamy prepared salad dressings and now whip up any type of vinaigrette at a moments notice. As long as you have olive oil, vinegar (some balsamic also), some Dijon mustard or other types of mustard and seasoning, you can whip up a dressing almost as quick as you can grab for that high fat store bought dressing that might still be in your refrigerator.

I don’t really think about the calories when I’m making a salad at home. I’m just thinking I can make one thing and not doing a protein, sides, etc., etc. Even though this salad has a long list of ingredients, you can prep everything early in the day and then just throw it together for your evening meal. For a salad with few ingredients and big taste, I posted the Bitter Green Salad with Yuzu dressing from our Hawaiian feast a few weeks ago.

My sister has always loved Houston’s Restaurant Evil Jungle Thai Salad. I have yet to taste it but I take her word that it is a delicious salad and she says it’s her most favorite restaurant salad.

So I started googling their recipe and came up with several copycat recipes. I’m sticking with the dressing recipe but added more garlic (or course) and for the salad, I omitted the noodles just because I didn’t think I would like noodles in a salad. I also added oranges instead of mango (I eat enough mango as it is), added the fresh ginger, jalapenos, the avocado and the savoy cabbage along with a mixture of lettuce. I browned my sesame seeds (not in their recipe) and the peanuts in a dry skillet which really adds a nice toasty taste to the salad. I think I changed enough ingredients in this salad to call it my own but I would have to say the Evil Thai Steak Salad from Houston’s Restaurant was definitely my inspiration.

While visiting in Chicago before Christmas, we made this one night at our son and daughter-in-law’s house, and we all enjoyed it along with some fresh crusty French bread and some Cambozola cheese.

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Full of wine and food but enough room for this dessert.

(Sorry about the pictures for this dessert, I think the camera was a little tipsy all night)

This is the last (thank goodness, I’m sure you are saying to yourself) of our recipes from our feast over Thanksgiving weekend.

For our Hawaiian feast my part was to make the Hawaiian Coconut Shrimp with Orange Lime Dipping Sauce and I also helped with the Corn and Crab Bisque. The dessert recipe was orphaned so I decided to take that on too.

We had so much to eat and drink that night but believe me most of us cleaned our plates of this dessert. Always wanting to prepare as much as possible early, I made these pineapple upside down cakes in individual ramekins and frozen them about 5 days before our dinner. I was not sure if I would be able to turn them out onto the dish and have the gooey caramel sauce release from the dish. BUT, after rewarming in a low oven for about 30 minutes, they flipped out beautifully. The ice cream was made the day before and at the last minute I decided to make them a little more drunkened and I made the rum glaze that goes with a rum cake recipe I have been doing for years.  – WINNER.

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Great make-ahead appetizer for holiday parties.

Merry Christmas everyone and here’s a little appetizer you can plan for your New Year’s Eve celebration.

I remember my first shrimp appetizer I made as a newly wed. And, it wasn’t as delicious as this shrimp pie. My early years of marriage, I’m sure like most people’s, was full of quick little appetizers because most of us didn’t know how to cook and a fancy canapé might have been a Ritz cracker with some Cheese Whiz.

One of my first appetizers was taking a block of cream cheese and covering it with “gasp” canned shrimp and topping it with a bottle of chili sauce. Did you ever do the Pickapeppa sauce on cream cheese. Now, that’s still one I enjoy making.

Appetizers have always been one of my favorite things to make for myself and also for parties I cater. I love having a freezer full of leftover appetizers that I can pull out on a moment’s notice and come across as the perfect little wife. That’s funny because I’m so far from being perfect.

I decided to make this at the last minute for our bunco group in December. I had all the ingredients and this appetizer is fast to throw together with a lot of taste. It does have chili sauce in it but a lot of other tasty things. I hope you will add this to your collection of recipes to try out for your next party.

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