Nov 27: Thanksgiving report
Every Thanksgiving, a bunch of people from my church get together around 9 in the morning and play football. The annual tradition is known as the Turkey Bowl. As usual, there were about 15 people, and as usual it was a lot of fun. I was able to QB for a while, knocked into a bunch of people (even sending one guy to the ground, a favor he repaid shortly), and even caught the ball occasionally. And, as is the tradition, I could hardly walk afterwards. I'm not one who is known for his dedicated adherence to the practice known as exercise, much less for the kind of exercise that would prepare one for a football game, what with all its running and stopping and turning and hitting and throwing and falling and stuff. It is now almost four days later and there are still 3 distinct spots on my body that continue to ache. On Friday, Cyndi massaged me with a rolling pin, which was the single most duplicitous event in my life: it was pure agonizing torture, yet I could feel the baseball sized knots in my muscles lessen with each pass of the pain pin. I'm not sure why I never thought of massage by rolling pin before, but now that I've experienced it, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
We had dinner really early this year at 1 p.m. Usually, we have it at 3, which is still pretty early, but pretty standard for Thanksgiving dinners. Dinner was good. We had all the usual usuals, and then some extra mormon usuals, and then some unusuals (well, one at least). The usuals are, of course, turkey, potatoes, yams, salad, stuffing, cranberry sauce, rolls, and green beans. The extra mormon usuals are mainly jello. The joke is always green jello, but I've only had green jello once or twice in my life (even at mormon dinners in utah, where anything goes jello-wise). Both jellos are side dishes that I grew up eating, one typically only came out for the holidays, but the other was the jello workhorse in my house. The first is a two-layer concoction. The bottom layer is rasperry jello with actual rasperries in it. That is topped with a green substance that I think is jello based, but has something in it to make it opaque and creamy. The other, which just happens to be my favorite jello, apricot jello with sliced bananas suspended mid-jello. I know it sounds pretty wacky, but it's really good. The apricot jello, like all jello, doesn't much taste like the fruit that it is made from, so it's not too powerful. The flavors of the jello and the bananas complement each other quite nicely. Growing up, we also used to have this horrid orange-colored jello with shredded carrots, an ok orange-colored jello with mandarin oranges, and another jello (can't remember the color or flavor) with pineapple chunks and topped with some sort of creamy something. I wasn't a big fan of any of these.
The unusual dish deserves it's own paragraph. Being mormon, the unusual dish was, again, jello. That's right, we had three different jello dishes at my Thanksgiving dinner. But this jello was the most beautiful, time-intensive, complexly flavored thing I think I've ever eaten. It was comprised of 12 layers, each a couple millimeters thick. Each color of the rainbow--red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple--were given two layers: one translucent, and one opaque. It was made by a guest and took 8 hours to prepare. Each layer would be prepared and then would have to cool before adding the next. It was amazing. It was so pretty that you almost didn't want to eat it, but when you did, you could taste each and every flavor individually. It tasted like eating an entire roll of Sweet Tarts at once, except cold and gooey. I still prefer the apricot and banana jello for its simple brilliance, but this was something incredible.
Since my parents were having so many people over (final count: 22), we divied up what everyone was going to make. We ended up doing two turkeys, one of which I made using this recipe from the Food Network. Cyndi made her apple pie and some pumpkin canoles. The turkey turned out fantastic--nice and tender and moist. It was still moist hours later when people were making sandwiches out of it. I'm posting pics of the turkey and the pie at the end of this post.
Since dinner was done so early, we had a lot of time to hang out, play games, nap, watch football, eat pie, etc. before the day was done. It was a really good time, even if I couldn't walk through most of it.
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This was a good post. I never knew that jello was a mormon tradition. Is it just for thanksgiving?
I've had several of the jello dishes you talk about, but the layered one sounds great. I had some relative (not mormon) that always used to make either green with shredded pineapple (eh, ok, not my favorite) or with shredded carrots, which in my mind there should be some sort of law against.
It's not part of the religion or anything (what do you think we are, scientologists?), but for some reason it has become part of the culture.
Pineapple and carrots aren't even the worst. I've been to dinners where there was jello with tuna, and possibly one with chicken.
Somewhere, there's a book that is nothing but mormon jello recipes. I searched for it, but could only find this:
The Essential Mormon Cookbook: Green Jell-O, Funeral Potatoes, and Other Secret Combinations
I'm with Rob; this was another excellent post. You should quit blogging while you're ahead. And to all of those readers who think Furious is great, don't forget the fact that he's also author of the worst blog post ever.
Anyway, I wanted to ask you why jello, which is disgusting, especially when it has solids in it, has become a LDS Thanksgiving tradition. You don't really answer Rob's question, and although I could search for it, I'd rather hear it straight from the LDSers' mouth.
Actually, it's not just for Thanksgiving. I have no idea why it's become a part of the LDS culture. It's weird.
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Every Thanksgiving, a bunch of people from my church get together around 9 in the morning and play football. The annual tradition is known as the Turkey Bowl. As usual, there were about 15 people, and as usual it was a lot of fun. I was able to QB for a while, knocked into a bunch of people (even sending one guy to the ground, a favor he repaid shortly), and even caught the ball occasionally. And, as is the tradition, I could hardly walk afterwards. I'm not one who is known for his dedicated adherence to the practice known as exercise, much less for the kind of exercise that would prepare one for a football game, what with all its running and stopping and turning and hitting and throwing and falling and stuff. It is now almost four days later and there are still 3 distinct spots on my body that continue to ache. On Friday, Cyndi massaged me with a rolling pin, which was the single most duplicitous event in my life: it was pure agonizing torture, yet I could feel the baseball sized knots in my muscles lessen with each pass of the pain pin. I'm not sure why I never thought of massage by rolling pin before, but now that I've experienced it, I wholeheartedly recommend it.
We had dinner really early this year at 1 p.m. Usually, we have it at 3, which is still pretty early, but pretty standard for Thanksgiving dinners. Dinner was good. We had all the usual usuals, and then some extra mormon usuals, and then some unusuals (well, one at least). The usuals are, of course, turkey, potatoes, yams, salad, stuffing, cranberry sauce, rolls, and green beans. The extra mormon usuals are mainly jello. The joke is always green jello, but I've only had green jello once or twice in my life (even at mormon dinners in utah, where anything goes jello-wise). Both jellos are side dishes that I grew up eating, one typically only came out for the holidays, but the other was the jello workhorse in my house. The first is a two-layer concoction. The bottom layer is rasperry jello with actual rasperries in it. That is topped with a green substance that I think is jello based, but has something in it to make it opaque and creamy. The other, which just happens to be my favorite jello, apricot jello with sliced bananas suspended mid-jello. I know it sounds pretty wacky, but it's really good. The apricot jello, like all jello, doesn't much taste like the fruit that it is made from, so it's not too powerful. The flavors of the jello and the bananas complement each other quite nicely. Growing up, we also used to have this horrid orange-colored jello with shredded carrots, an ok orange-colored jello with mandarin oranges, and another jello (can't remember the color or flavor) with pineapple chunks and topped with some sort of creamy something. I wasn't a big fan of any of these.
The unusual dish deserves it's own paragraph. Being mormon, the unusual dish was, again, jello. That's right, we had three different jello dishes at my Thanksgiving dinner. But this jello was the most beautiful, time-intensive, complexly flavored thing I think I've ever eaten. It was comprised of 12 layers, each a couple millimeters thick. Each color of the rainbow--red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple--were given two layers: one translucent, and one opaque. It was made by a guest and took 8 hours to prepare. Each layer would be prepared and then would have to cool before adding the next. It was amazing. It was so pretty that you almost didn't want to eat it, but when you did, you could taste each and every flavor individually. It tasted like eating an entire roll of Sweet Tarts at once, except cold and gooey. I still prefer the apricot and banana jello for its simple brilliance, but this was something incredible.
Since my parents were having so many people over (final count: 22), we divied up what everyone was going to make. We ended up doing two turkeys, one of which I made using this recipe from the Food Network. Cyndi made her apple pie and some pumpkin canoles. The turkey turned out fantastic--nice and tender and moist. It was still moist hours later when people were making sandwiches out of it. I'm posting pics of the turkey and the pie at the end of this post.
Since dinner was done so early, we had a lot of time to hang out, play games, nap, watch football, eat pie, etc. before the day was done. It was a really good time, even if I couldn't walk through most of it.
Pics (click for bigger versions):
We had dinner really early this year at 1 p.m. Usually, we have it at 3, which is still pretty early, but pretty standard for Thanksgiving dinners. Dinner was good. We had all the usual usuals, and then some extra mormon usuals, and then some unusuals (well, one at least). The usuals are, of course, turkey, potatoes, yams, salad, stuffing, cranberry sauce, rolls, and green beans. The extra mormon usuals are mainly jello. The joke is always green jello, but I've only had green jello once or twice in my life (even at mormon dinners in utah, where anything goes jello-wise). Both jellos are side dishes that I grew up eating, one typically only came out for the holidays, but the other was the jello workhorse in my house. The first is a two-layer concoction. The bottom layer is rasperry jello with actual rasperries in it. That is topped with a green substance that I think is jello based, but has something in it to make it opaque and creamy. The other, which just happens to be my favorite jello, apricot jello with sliced bananas suspended mid-jello. I know it sounds pretty wacky, but it's really good. The apricot jello, like all jello, doesn't much taste like the fruit that it is made from, so it's not too powerful. The flavors of the jello and the bananas complement each other quite nicely. Growing up, we also used to have this horrid orange-colored jello with shredded carrots, an ok orange-colored jello with mandarin oranges, and another jello (can't remember the color or flavor) with pineapple chunks and topped with some sort of creamy something. I wasn't a big fan of any of these.
The unusual dish deserves it's own paragraph. Being mormon, the unusual dish was, again, jello. That's right, we had three different jello dishes at my Thanksgiving dinner. But this jello was the most beautiful, time-intensive, complexly flavored thing I think I've ever eaten. It was comprised of 12 layers, each a couple millimeters thick. Each color of the rainbow--red, yellow, blue, green, orange, purple--were given two layers: one translucent, and one opaque. It was made by a guest and took 8 hours to prepare. Each layer would be prepared and then would have to cool before adding the next. It was amazing. It was so pretty that you almost didn't want to eat it, but when you did, you could taste each and every flavor individually. It tasted like eating an entire roll of Sweet Tarts at once, except cold and gooey. I still prefer the apricot and banana jello for its simple brilliance, but this was something incredible.
Since my parents were having so many people over (final count: 22), we divied up what everyone was going to make. We ended up doing two turkeys, one of which I made using this recipe from the Food Network. Cyndi made her apple pie and some pumpkin canoles. The turkey turned out fantastic--nice and tender and moist. It was still moist hours later when people were making sandwiches out of it. I'm posting pics of the turkey and the pie at the end of this post.
Since dinner was done so early, we had a lot of time to hang out, play games, nap, watch football, eat pie, etc. before the day was done. It was a really good time, even if I couldn't walk through most of it.
Pics (click for bigger versions):
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This was a good post. I never knew that jello was a mormon tradition. Is it just for thanksgiving?
I've had several of the jello dishes you talk about, but the layered one sounds great. I had some relative (not mormon) that always used to make either green with shredded pineapple (eh, ok, not my favorite) or with shredded carrots, which in my mind there should be some sort of law against.
I've had several of the jello dishes you talk about, but the layered one sounds great. I had some relative (not mormon) that always used to make either green with shredded pineapple (eh, ok, not my favorite) or with shredded carrots, which in my mind there should be some sort of law against.
It's not part of the religion or anything (what do you think we are, scientologists?), but for some reason it has become part of the culture.
Pineapple and carrots aren't even the worst. I've been to dinners where there was jello with tuna, and possibly one with chicken.
Somewhere, there's a book that is nothing but mormon jello recipes. I searched for it, but could only find this:
The Essential Mormon Cookbook: Green Jell-O, Funeral Potatoes, and Other Secret Combinations
Pineapple and carrots aren't even the worst. I've been to dinners where there was jello with tuna, and possibly one with chicken.
Somewhere, there's a book that is nothing but mormon jello recipes. I searched for it, but could only find this:
The Essential Mormon Cookbook: Green Jell-O, Funeral Potatoes, and Other Secret Combinations
I'm with Rob; this was another excellent post. You should quit blogging while you're ahead. And to all of those readers who think Furious is great, don't forget the fact that he's also author of the worst blog post ever.
Anyway, I wanted to ask you why jello, which is disgusting, especially when it has solids in it, has become a LDS Thanksgiving tradition. You don't really answer Rob's question, and although I could search for it, I'd rather hear it straight from the LDSers' mouth.
Anyway, I wanted to ask you why jello, which is disgusting, especially when it has solids in it, has become a LDS Thanksgiving tradition. You don't really answer Rob's question, and although I could search for it, I'd rather hear it straight from the LDSers' mouth.
Actually, it's not just for Thanksgiving. I have no idea why it's become a part of the LDS culture. It's weird.
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Many of those who read my Thanksgiving post had questions about the odd relationship that exists between the king of gelatin, Jell-O, and Mormons. So, to better illuminate this strange culture quirk, I've compiled the following trail. Sadly, I wasn't ab
Tracked: Dec 12, 21:10
Cyndi found this picture of some rainbow Jell-O, similar to the stuff I talked about in my Thanksgiving post: (click it to see it a higher-res version) Like I said, this rainbow jello is similar, but not the same as the stuff I had. The stuff I h
Tracked: Dec 14, 22:14