The Jell-O salad that brought me through every chaotic family reunion

Delicacies in the middle west were always in the center of family meetings during my childhood, and these meetings were said to be the least said. My father is one of 10 siblings while my mother is the oldest of 13. Double these numbers to take into account the spouses, and then add dozens more for cousins and beyond the result was the meeting of at least 50 people, with tables full of homemade dishes to feed them all.

And what delicacy: hearty homemade cheese potatoes, brownies with white chocolate chips and my mother is famous “Fruit pizza“, Which consisted of sugar cek’s dough crust, which were covered with vanilla yogurt and fresh fruit.

But despite the fun with huge families, these celebrations dosed to me with a seizure of anxiety that made it difficult to gather at the table table. I loved my aunts, uncle, cousins and grandparents – there was no doubt about it – but I wasn’t on the chaos and she was getting used to it volume That came with our holiday celebrations or family reunions. My parents had only two children, my brother and me, so life at home was much calmer. When we went to a family celebration, it meant several hours of contacts, walking around to run around with other children and make small talk with relatives that I didn’t see very often. In short, it was often overwhelming.

Here came a very specific, sweet and tasty savior: strawberry brezel salad.

To date, I’m not even sure who did it. It would have been my grandmother maternal side or one of my mother’s many siblings (everyone has first names with “J”, just to do things more chaotic). It could even have been flogged by a modest cousin who explores her culinary skills. But no matter where it comes, it was always there on the dessert table when we gathered with my mother’s family: a classic “salad” in the middle west with cream cheese filling, strawberry jell-o, bonafid strawberry slices and pièce de Résistance-a crust made of crushed bendles for the perfect mix of salt and sweet.

And it was this dish that served my tool for evasion and flight when things just got too much. It was my ally, my consolation, my everything.

I didn’t feel like interacting with a friend of the family who disassembled my hair as if I was a toddler that was a toddler until my teenage years? Simply: just sorry to get something Jell-o-delicacy. Not in the mood to endure the sensory overload of more than 30 family members who take part in a heated EDU tournament or shout the television while the Detroit Lions blew another lead in the first quarter? Take a plate with strawberries and sneak the peace of the veranda of my grandparents. Experience the fear of teenage and try to avoid questions about this now corresponding friend that I have brought to the last family reunion? They guessed it: grab a plate with strawberry pretzelkiness and hid in the corner and made it clear that there was no room for conversations (unless we discussed how this dessert salad was granted).

After Washington PostThe first iteration of this succulent salate performed in the 1960s when Jell-O took on a leading role (thanks to its advertising character) in the heart of many sweet treats. During the following decades, the nod on the dessert appeared in Chicago’s publications to Florida – and at some point it apparently became a staple for meetings in the middle west like that of my family. Today it is a retro dessert that can be changed in such a way that they include various berries, varying jell-o-aromas to supplement the strawberries, or additional pretzels in the form of crumbs that are sprinkled with it.

Yes, food brings people together and there is a world of writing about this dynamic. Yes, it is something warm and magical to gather a common dish or dig into a dessert prepared with love. But I am also grateful for food as an escape form; A bite of salty loneliness when our senses or emotions are overwhelmed. And as much as I love my strange, loud, absurd big family, I am a person who only needs a break from time to time. After all, even the crooked great aunt would not dare between a girl in the middle west and her strawberry-pretzel salad.

And now I can make it for myself thanks to this classic recipe. I can even invite a few family members to share.