Lime Jello

Saturday we went away kind of early in the morning to do some garage saling. We found some good deals but were tired from late nights and early mornings all week. So we decided to head home shortly after lunch. Not having much extra room in the van due to the purchase of 4 computer systems for our school, we figured we would get enough groceries at WalMart to get by through Monday.

We got home and I relaxed by playing around on the computer for quite a while. I finally decided to get the tedious task of weekly hair-washing underway around 7 pm (this is one time when I would love to have all boys!) While leaning over the tub, with my hair soaking wet, I suddenly realized I was supposed to make two dishes to help serve the UBC choir for Sunday dinner! Yikes! My cupboards were nearly bare and it wasn’t like I could make just anything. I had signed up for SPECIFIC items…vegetable casserole and a jello salad.

We thought we would get everyone ready and make a quick run to Frankfort around bedtime to get what I needed. But by the time bedtime came around, Tony wasn’t feeling the greatest and I was exhausted. He begged me to let him run to the gas station to see what they had to offer. I finally conceded and went off to rummage through my bare cupboards again. I also logged on to allrecipes.com to see what kind of recipe I could find to work with the ingredients we could collect. I found a few recipes that I thought I might be able to combine for green bean casserole.

Tony came home with three cans of mushroom soup and three boxes of LIME jello. Now if I could pick any jello I wanted from all flavors available, rest assured that lime would be LAST on my list! But I didn’t have much choice. So back to allrecipes.com to see what I can find for lime jello.

I printed off two different recipes and headed BACK to the kitchen to see which recipe was the winner of “most ingredients on hand”. No cream cheese or sprite, so the first one was definitely out. I couldn’t believe that I was only lacking one ingredient from the second recipe and I had mandarin oranges that I could substitute for pineapple in that one. I was finally on a roll!

After I got our youngest settled for the night, I began assembling my jello salad. Tony watched as I pulled out mandarin oranges, whipping cream, walnuts and cheese. Then I got out the grater and chopper. I chopped the nuts, sliced the cheese and ran it through the grater. Tony stood with gaping mouth and wide eyes. I put the jello in the fridge to chill for a half hour before adding the last few ingredients. I turned to leave the kitchen and heard this sarcastic comment come from the mouth of my culinary husband, “I can’t wait to eat your jello salad!” “What’s wrong with it?” I asked. He said one word followed by a question mark, “CHEESE?”

I didn’t tell him then, but I thought it sounded weird too. But what choice did I have? It was the only recipe I had all the ingredients for and I refused to show up empty-handed or with a completely different dish. Besides, SOMEONE has to like it or it wouldn’t be a recipe, right?

I headed upstairs to get ready for bed and then came back down to finish adding those last ingredients. As I was folding the whipping cream, nuts and cheese in, I got a little bit on my finger. Well, every good cook licks the goods off her fingers (even if it is lime jello!) In doing so, realization dawned…I was sure I’d had this dish before at a pot-luck (or pitch in as they say here in Hoosier country) and just didn’t know all the ingredients that were in it.

At first I was surprised and a bit sorry that very little was taken from any of the three jello salads at the dinner on Sunday. I’ve concluded that college students would rather have real mashed potatoes and chocolate cake than jello salad. But today, I decided that I was okay with that…I’ve been enjoying my lime jello salad.