Mayonnaise Makes the Salad Creamy

The geniuses at Jell-O thought of everything.  Seriously, I’m pretty sure the last thing you think to suspend in Jell-O is lima beans and they came up with that one.  In the “Crown Jewel Dessert” recipe you actually suspend cubes of Jell-O in more Jell-O. Man, that's so meta…

In The Joys of Jell-O, one of my favorite 
vintage cookbooks, there are lots of recipes 
with mainstay ingredients like pineapple tidbits 
and miniature marshmallows.  But if you’re 
going to devote an entire cookbook to 
Jell-O, you need to get creative. Here’s a 
list of tasty ingredients spotted in various 
recipes:

¾ cup Post Grape Nuts cereal
¾ cup finely cut cooked prunes
1 bottle (7 oz.) cola beverage
1 avocado
Marshmallow-Mayonnaise Topping
Horseradish
Shredded Cabbage
Tabasco Sauce
¼ cup chopped dill pickle
1 ½ cups chopped spinach
Barbecue Cubes
¾ cup drained sliced pickled beets
pickled herring
1 can (1lb.) whole kernel corn
2 bouillon cubes

I wish I wrote this cookbook.  Then, not only could I have developed and eaten a bunch of Jell-O concoctions, I could’ve written descriptions like this:

The fruits for this dazzler are available any season of the year. (Orange and Grape Duo)

This tasty salad is a lovely luncheon entrée with cold cuts and hot muffins. (Waldorf Mold)

A tart mold of grapefruit perks up the most humdrum lunch or dinner. (Grapefruit Salad)

The sunshine of the West is reflected in this delightful salad creation. (California Fruit Salad)

This tasty salad is economical in cost, but there’s no shortage of flavor. (Penny-Wise Salad)

An easy way to glamorize inexpensive canned pear halves. (Cardinal Pear Mold)

A colorful jewel of a salad that will crown your meal regally. (Cauliflower Radish Salad)

A charming finale to a meal. (Apricot Bavarian Cream) 

I think my lifelong wish to come up with paint color names is eclipsed by my desire to title Jell-O mold recipes.  Here are some of my favorites from The Joys of Jell-O:

Creamy Freeze

Ice Cream Party Dessert

Cherry Cheese Charmer

Ring-Around-the-Fruit

Ring-Around-the-Tuna

Fruited Perfection

Three-Fruit Fantasy

Under the Sea Salad

Hawaiian Eyeful

Supper Salad

Also, if anyone needs to name a cat, there is:

Orange Frost

Ribbon Loaf

Cooky Stacks

Frosty Melon

Everyone, I present to you my cat, Cooky Stacks:

 The Joys of Jell-O, indeed!

Necktie Mother-lode: a necktie upcycling tutorial

Not only did the Salvation Army in Menomonee Falls have a jam-packed, 4-sided, multi-tiered rack of neckties, there was an overflowing laundry basket full of ties on the floor next to it!

Sifting through the mass, I pulled out some real beauties…

Seriously, I don’t think I’ve been this excited since this Flying Club trophy entered my life:

Where have these neckties been? 1976 wedding? 1979 parent-teacher conferences? I’m guessing they haven’t been loved in a while so now it’s time for them to feel some love! (After I rip them apart, cut them up, and stab them repeatedly with my sewing machine needle, that is.)

Hello, little necktie wristlet carrying case thingy…here’s how you were born:

1. Cold wash, hang dry, and let ‘er rip!

2. Cut accordingly. To fit my iPhone, I cut the pouch piece 13.5”x8”. The strap is 13”x3” and the piece to attach the D-ring is 3”x3”. It takes a wide tie to accommodate these measurements.

3. Iron on some medium weight interfacing, pin and sew!

3 ½. Bonus tip! Sew a piece of ribbon or cord inside your strap to easily turn it inside-out. (this will save you 20 minutes and several swear words)

4. Press, pin and sew your little pouch together. When topstitching the edges of your strap, leave about an inch open at the triangular end so when you complete the strap loop you can fit the end neatly inside.

5. Attach your D-ring and strap and you’re almost there!

6. Add a snap in a snap!

7. Now you’re ready for a night out on the town spent effortlessly dangling this little beauty on your arm. Enjoy!

My First Thrift Store

In high school, I discovered my hometown thrift store: The Thrift Shoppe. It’s the crown jewel of Whitewater, WI as far as I’m concerned. This thrift store has a special place in my heart, not only because it is where my love of thifting began, but also because it hasn’t changed since. It’s a time capsule of bargains.

From the outside, The Thrift Shoppe looks like your grandma’s house. On the inside, however, you’ll find no doilies or plastic-covered furniture. Instead, the 9 rooms of this 100-year-old house are chock full of neatly organized treasures. Owned by the nearby Lutheran Church, this thrift store has been energetically staffed by beautiful grey-haired volunteers for 45 years. In my opinion, it is top-notch in pricing, variety and service. Plus, it’s the definition of “quaint.”

I still remember the first shirt I bought there, in large part because I wore it so often. I loved that shirt. I’m pretty sure I thought it made me super cool, although looking back I needed more than a shirt to help me in that department. I don’t know what happened to it, and sadly the only evidence I have now of its existence is this picture of me wearing it and playing the contra-bass clarinet. Was I super cool, or what?

I do find it strange that I don’t know the whereabouts of that shirt. I tend to hold on to well-loved clothes long after I’ve stopped wearing them. I still have the jean jacket I adored in 5^th grade, a sweater I coveted and saved up for in 9^th grade, and several items from my formative thrifting years in college (some of which still make the rotation to this day).

Why do I hang on to these clothes? Why am I so attached? Am I saving these things for my future children, in the hopes that they’ll be as super cool as I am? Or am I just too sentimental? If I let go of the much-loved things in my life, am I somehow letting go of a part of myself?

These clothes are woven with memories, and for me, part of the memory is the moment we first met: Me, tirelessly searching the t-shirt racks. I spot something promising and my heart skips a beat. A quick scan for stains, size, softness--all signs point to…YES! Well, it is very nice to meet you! You’ll be living with me from now on. Special bonus for being funny or weird. Here’s one of my all time favorites:

It’s not always easy to visit the Whitewater Thrift Shoppe. While they have scheduled hours, they aren’t plentiful. And if you’re only in town because it’s a holiday, forget it. They will probably be closed a week before and after. But this is all part of the charm and what makes it great. Goodwills may be open on Sundays and have a rack of t-shirts a mile long, but they sure don’t have charm.

What The Thrift Shoppe lacks in convenience it more than makes up for in character: the handwritten price tags; the carefully organized craft section; the lovely woman who will write out your receipt in loopy script and gently wrap up your purchases. She will ask you if you go to the university or if you are an artist. She will rip apart the receipt, stab the store copy onto the metal holder and wish you to have a great day. By the sparkle in her eyes, you will know that she means it.

This is the thrift store I want to shoppe at. The next time I head up the creaky stairs to sift through the shirt rack in the attic, I’ll catch a glimpse of the dusty corners of my youth. And it will feel a bit like going home.

Intermittent Forks

When I was in teacher school, I learned about the power of intermittent reinforcement. That's why casinos are such a lucrative business. People feed slot machines because they want to win big and the sporadic small payouts fuel that hope while emptying wallets. Similarly, the intermittent reinforcements of thrifting keep me coming back for more. Going to one estate sale full of Precious Moments figurines and XXL women’s clothing is validated when I score a pile of vintage wrapping paper at another. I find myself not only scouring thrift stores and garage sales for these treasures, but also the places of daily life. My treasure-hunting-antenna is always up!

As a middle school reading teacher (and reinforcement distributor) in Queens, New York, I was lucky enough to teach a program requiring a class-size of no more than 15 students. Having a small class not only saved my sanity, but saved me money while stocking my prize bin. My students never knew when or for what they might receive a raffle ticket, but the chance kept most of them in check. If intermittent reinforcement can wrangle middle schoolers, it is a powerful force indeed.

As a side product of my small classes, however, I was sequestered away in the old home economics room, which hadn’t been used in several years. Opening the door for the first time felt like cracking the seal on a hyperbolic chamber. The stale-aired room was cramped, dusty, and resembled the inside of a house in desperate need of remodeling. Rows of wooden cabinets lined the walls beneath a mysteriously stained drop ceiling and wooden boxes covered exposed gas jets that remained from the previously removed ovens. Ah, to be a teacher.

Middle school is an inherently strange place, and this environment made the experience that much more bizarre. Weirder still was the fact that many of the cabinets and drawers still contained 40-year old dishes, pans and cooking utensils. I don’t know what middle school home economics class made fondue, but look what I found:

Unless there is suddenly money in the budget to teach the finer points of cheese-dunkery, I’m pretty sure no one will miss it.

Several of the drawers and cabinets had been screwed shut, and on the last day of school, I brought my screwdriver and went to work, hoping to unearth a hidden treasure. What I found was better than a pouch of magic beans: a whole drawer full of silverware, several pieces of which were stamped “BD. of ED. N.Y.C.” Jackpot! I couldn’t dream up a better reward for my harrowed time spent in the throes of NYC public education.

Now, every time I sit down to enjoy a meal I can savor that job as a distant memory, one bite at a time. After all, I earned it.