channeling another era

Suddenly it seems that all I am interested in cooking these days are:

• Cupcakes
  
• Jell-o salads
• Stew-like dishes with cabbage, in my new faux Le Creuset dutch oven ($8 at Goodwill! Whoop!)

Don't knock the Jell-o salad just on principle. Here are two that will be making an appearance at our Labor Day Par-tay:

Tomato Soup Cottage Cheese Salad (Courtesy of Grandma Claussen)

1 pkg. Lemon Jello dissolved in 1 Can HOT Undiluted Tomato Soup. Let cool.

Mix 1C Cottage Cheese with 1C Mayonnaise

Add:

1 C chopped Celery
¼ C chopped Onion
½ C chopped Green Pepper
1Tbsp. Apple Cider Vinegar
Sprinkle of Salt

Mix with Soup Mix.
Chill.
Molds well.

Orange Splendor

1 package orange Jell-o
1 small can Mandarin oranges
1 small can crushed pineapple

Alternate recipe: substitute grated carrots for oranges. Its great, I swear.

Note: Always mix fruit into Jell-o once its set enough to be a bit soupy, so all the fruit doesn't sink to the bottom. A basic rule in all jell-o salads, unless the intention is to have it at the bottom. For instance, yellow bananas at the bottom of a clear bowl of blue jell-o ---Looks like the ocean!