Melmac and Jello...and so forth...

It's an Easter tradition at Willow Manor to make the green Jello salad my grandmother used to make in the 1950s. I'm not a Jello-maker, but I'm compelled to make this every year, in her honor.  Easter dinner is just not right without it.  It's basically shredded cabbage, carrots, and crushed pineapple in lime Jello.  She used to serve a dollop of Miracle Whip on top, which is a tad too retro for my taste.

I made it in the cool retro Melmac dish I found yesterday at G-Dub (my local Goodwill store) for 99 cents.  I love the yummy cream-of-wheat-ish pattern.

Melmac dates from the 50s and 60s, and is made from a resin called Melamine, sometimes referred to as Texasware. It's lightweight, colorful, and fun. There's a whole stack of it on my kitchen counter. I can't function without it.

The confetti-like patterns remind me of melted crayons, and my first box of 64, with the built-in sharpener on the back. I read recently that the scent of crayons is actually been proven to lower your blood pressure.  I randomly pop the lid of my big jar of crayons and inhale. I already knew it was good for me.

This little cup, a garage sale find, was my first piece.  I got it because it reminded me of Grandma's green Jello salad.

Hope you and yours enjoy the Easter weekend...

just a coffee blend

Donut Store Blend

Gone the way

of the phone booth

and station wagon,

the morning tradition

is dunked, or otherwise

reduced to an essence

added to the grind,

a kind of tribute.

Time-travel across

the politically correct,

wrap one in wax paper,

dribble jelly for old times' sake,

the icing so sweet

it makes your teeth hurt.

tk/February 2012

Listen to R.A.D. Stainforth's sweet reading ... guaranteed to make you dribble jelly ...

Visit his great blog Black Dogs.

Join The Mag creative writing group. 
image: Epic Mahoney

fall-licious

Yesterday, I savored one of my favorite fall treats, a crisp, luscious caramel apple. It's a variation of the candy apple, or toffee apple. While the toppings vary from place to place, there is always a stick inserted in the core, for easy eating. My personal preference, is a firm, tart apple, like Granny Smith or Fuji, dipped in caramel and coated in chopped peanuts. The orchard where we like to buy apples sold the world's best homemade caramel apples, made by a local farm woman. She passed away several years ago, and I've never found one quite so delicious as hers, until yesterday. Where did I find it? My little Aldi store, of all places. Three in a pack for $1.29.

Toffee apples are a common treat at autumn festivals in Western culture in the Northern Hemisphere, such as Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night because they happen to fall in the center of the annual apple harvest. In Germany and Latin American countries, they are most often associated with the Christmas season, and in China, a similar treat called Tanghulu is made by coating small fruits, traditionally hawthorns, with hard sugar syrup.

The most common coating is a hard layer of cooled sugar syrup, usually tinted red and sometimes flavored with cinnamon. The sugar syrup is heated to the "hard crack" stage before coating the apple to make a hard coating when the syrup cools. Other variations include caramel or taffy apples, and chocolate apples, rolled in assorted goodies, like sprinkles or coconut.

I'm not sure we Americans can claim the first candy apple, but this is what the Newark Evening News had to say in 1964:

William W. Kolb invented the red candy apple. Kolb, a veteran Newark candy-maker, produced his first batch of candied apples in 1908. While experimenting in his candy shop with red cinnamon candy for the Christmas trade, he dipped some apples into the mixture and put them in the windows for display. He sold the whole first batch for 5 cents each and later sold thousands yearly. Soon candied apples were being sold along the Jersey Shore, at the circus and in candy shops across the country, according to the Newark News in 1948.