Jell-O Joy Week!

December 22, 2012

A couple of months ago, I came across a cookbook at an estate sale called The New Joys of Jell-O. The copyright was 1975. The first recipe to catch my eye was one for "Jellied Gazpacho." I had to have that book!

The pictures alone made it worth the fifty-cent price tag: happy, 1970s families around the table enjoying their Jell-O parfaits and chic couples at cocktail parties sharing sophisticated Jell-O punches. It got me thinking. When was the last time I’d made anything more complicated than our traditional Christmas salad with Jell-O? Heck, how long since I’d made anything that jiggled? There were some pretty tasty looking recipes in that book.

Jell-O Joy Week at the Kearney Branch was born! To add an interesting twist to the usual cornucopia of holiday treats brought in the week before Christmas, we decided to make at least a few of them Jell-O related. We made Jell-O Poke Cake, Jell-O Candy Apple Salad, Orange Cream Layer Cake, and Spiced Jell-O Prune Whip, just to name a few. De-licious!!

Curious, I looked to see if we had any Jell-O cookbooks on our shelves here at MCPL. To my surprise, not only did we have three books devoted solely to gelatinous treats, but one of them is brand new. Hello, Jell-O by Victoria Belanger has 50 new recipes. Another book, called Celebrating One Hundred Years of Jell-O, showed me just how long this family favorite has been around.

If you think that Jell-O is just something you make when one of the kids is sick, think again! It’s cheap, tasty, fat-free, and a lot more versatile than you ever imagined! Check it out!

Laura M.
Kearney Branch