Jello

During this quiet time, I’ve been able to carefully consider many things. I’ve read two beautiful Quaker books, spent time in worship, and watched the treetops for hours. I’ve worked on a business plan for the farm and drawn up some better organizational plans for the house. But my mind keeps circling back to the troubling state of Quaker potlucks. They lack Jello salads.

Not many people seem bothered by this. Many of them are not even from Minnesota, and so they don’t feel the pull of local tradition. Others feel relieved as they free themselves from that pull. When I disparaged the selection of potluck offerings to a new friend from the Northfield meeting, she disagreed. Other churches offer junk food, she said, but we have a really healthful spread. For example, at the last big potluck, she enjoyed a vegan seaweed lasagna.

Here we get to the real irony of the situation. I probably wouldn’t eat Jello salad at a potluck. After feeling like I had a low-level stomach flu for two years, and seeing several doctors, I finally found a diet that allowed me to feel like a regular person again. The results of the diet were dramatic, and two years later, I’m still feeling good. But I don’t eat preservatives. Or sugar. Or grain. Or mysterious ingredients. Vividly colored Jello, by its very nature, has mysterious ingredients. And often the salads are graced with Cool Whip, another mysterious ingredient.

I can’t move past the idea that I’m failing my family and community by abandoning the traditional Jello salad. It was there at family gatherings, and the funerals of the older generation. When I eat it, I feel connected to good, practical relatives and to good, practical people who might as well be relatives. They strengthen me and feed me and make me laugh. I want them to join me, at least in spirit, at Quaker potlucks.

But what kind of person would bring a potluck dish to church that she won’t eat?

My daughter and I were thumbing through a reprint of a 1950 Betty Crocker cookbook, and I think we discovered a solution. There we found the grandmothers of gelatin salads, made with plain gelatin and fruit and real whipped cream, and juices and even egg whites.

Some day, when I can cook again, I’ll make one of those recipes and bring it to potluck. I’m sure some real traditionalists would dismiss the salad as “different,” but maybe the salads would have been familiar to the real old-timers. Most importantly, I’ll feel that I am doing my very best to remedy a serious situation.