Fresh when it gets here from
Julie Barrett
Saturday, November 29, 2025
Prepare yourselves for another 25 days of gelatinous joy!
Joy may be in the eye of the beholder, but know ye that when these horrors were published, they were indeed joyful. Hence the name of not one - but two! - "Joys of Jell-O" recipe books! Seriously, these dishes were of their time, meaning they were cool. After all, they were refrigerated! The mere act of serving these up meant that not only could the family afford a refrigerator, but they could afford one large enough to fit a fancy mold or two without crowding out the rest of the food for the dinner party. Of course, it also infers that the hostess has the time to keep mixing the partially set wobbly stuff so the fruit or meats become evenly distributed or to keep making and adding layers of different colors - or both! Yes, these were truly status symbols of their time.
Each carefully curated confection is sourced from my collection of vintage recipe books.
And just so you know, what goes around comes around. Jell-O released a set of
limited edition molds for Thanksgiving.
Check back Monday for the first installment!
(Psst: If you wish to bide your time until then, do take a gander at the previous
Aspic Advent.)