Welcome to Utah:Jell-o capital of the world. We gotcher Red, Orange, Green, with peaches, with pineapple, with grapes, swirly Jell-o, Jell-o eggs, Jell-o salad (with spinach :eek: ), and that favorite Utah classic: Green Jell-o with carrots.
Once you get past the Jell-o, you come across another Utah phenomenon: fruit salad. 14 different kinds, in all possible flavors and colors. I once tried a fruit salad, and found that it had ham in it. Ham. I kid you not.
And no Mormon function would be complete without the Cheesy Potatos, Funeral Ham, and Crock Pot cuisine (usually involving suprise! cheese, potatos, and ham). *
And just you try to get past the cookie table (yes, a whole table) without trying at least 4.
I haven’t been to a Church Lady lunch in years, but lucky me, I get a whole battalion of Mormon relatives who serve the same exact things at family parties. Mountains of it.
*It’s actually kind of funny to see everyone trying to locate their Crock Pots after it’s all said and done. “I think that’s mine!” “Who brought the chili?”
I manage to snag every copy of every church cookbook that comes up for sale around here. There’s a lot of church ladies’ husbands that work in Security and they’re always selling cookbooks for their churches. I’m not sure there’s a casserole I don’t have a recipe for!
A table full of Hell-o molds and Church Ladies eyeing you to make sure you taste 'em all. :eek: Sounds like a Mormon Church Lady Jell-o checkpoint just might be the scariest of them all.
I ask this question out of both intrigue and fear lest I ever encounter it…What are Jell-o eggs? Do I really wanna know?
evilbeth, I’m with ya on the Church Lady cookbooks. I have this antique pie safe thing in my breakfast area. Three shelves (and I mean large shelves) contain nothing but Church Lady cookbooks. Just think, I could whip up at least a dozen different variations of broccoli casserole on a moment’s notice.
I should mention that I attended church for the first 17 years of my life, and no one ever served food for anything. Nor were there “church functions” other than weddings.
Of course, the church sat something like 2 or 3 thousand people and had to do two services to fit everyone in.
My mom has a recipe for Spam Casserole. And it’s good. It’s macaroni, pototoes, spam and cheese. AND IT’S GOOD!
Also, it’s ingrained deeply within the Church Lady Psyche. When someone’s sick, you make a casserole. When someone dies, you fry a chicken. Even though I had no where to take it, I had a overwhelming need to fry chicken on Saturday. <<sigh>>
They’re actually not too scary. Just Jell-o put into special molds that are egg-shaped. They usually show up around Easter and such.
The only downsides are trying to add whipped cream and trying to keep them from sliding off your plate. Not only slippery, but they roll!
You encounter some weird Jell-o shapes here, too. A certain aunt of mine is fond of making Jell-o in a brain-shaped mold. But not for Halloween, oh no. She makes them all year round. Try explaining that to people!
I’ve got a Church Lady recipe book which my mother and her various siblings and cousins and aunts compiled. It’s got the usual casseroles but also a few oddities such as Spaghetti Pie and Pork and Beans Bread. (I know the latter sounds grotesque, but it’s actually quite good.)
Ike, that is not fair, how the hell did you find out about this? What’s your midwestern street cred, hunh?
Jeez, that’s just not right, ya no?
My dad found that book one time when he was visiting my gramma in Fargo - he grew up with the stuff, every wednesday night at the United Lutheran Church in Grand Forks (gramma & grampa moved to the Big City when Dad was at UND). My personal favorites are “Jello For A Crowd” (three boxes of jello…and one banana), and the “Goulash Deluxe.” The goulash recipe is one of those brown-hamburger-meat-and-dump-cans-of-stuff-into-it things…and what makes it “Deluxe”?
Why, an extra half pound of hamburger, of course.
Seriously…when we buried my grandmother 2 years ago at First Lutheran in Fargo, I made the arrangements for the memorial service. From the Church Secretary’s perspective, the timing depended mainly on what sort of food we wanted: "Well, if you have a late morning service, we can serve a hot lunch - different kinds of hotdish, that sort of thing. But if you wait until after 12:30, we’ll have a cold lunch of open faced sandwiches and bars. (Of course! Bars! Ubiquitous, wonderful Bars, lemon squares and brownies - never just Cookies, halfway to Cake without being Too Much.) With cousins driving long distances to come, I had to opt for the latter. But it was lovely and right and made me remember, which is what these things are for, aren’t they?
Okay, here is the recipe for the Pork and Beans Bread:
1 16-oz can pork and beans, drained
2 cups sugar
1 cup cooking oil
3 eggs
2 cups self rising flour
1 tsp. cinnamon
1 tsp. vanilla
raisins or nuts, optional
Mix first four ingredients until smooth; add flour, vanilla and cinnamon; add nuts or raisins, if desired. Bake at 325 for 45-50 minutes. Makes two loaves.
