Remembering those old time summer yummies - Ambrosia

A friend was just at a party where one of the things they served was ambrosia and we were talking about how rare it is to see ambrosia anymore. We both agreed about how delicious it was and how much we enjoyed tt!

I was reminded of green vegetable jello mold! When I worked as a volunteer in the historical society world, at our annual lunches, those green jello vegetable molds always showed up and I LOVED them! There were the clear grren jello molds with the grated carrot stripps suspended in them and the molds with mayo mixed in and a more pudding quality to them - all absolutely delectable especially in the hot summer time.

They are not easy to make; I know because i have tried. Even jello is a challenge. Those foods reminded me of Murphy's Book Loft which used to be in Mullica Hill, NJ. It was a huge old barn behnd a victorian farm house and it housed thousands of second hand books in its two floors with nooks and crannies with chairs and foot stools so you could browse in comfort for as long as you liked. The smell of those old books ----- They also had a magazine room - a large area lined with walls of date labeled brown boxes contining magazines from the last 100 years. I liked to buy magazines from my birth year 1945, and also sometimes from the 60's because the advertising was so glorious - especially holiday issues. I have no idea where those magazines are now - maybe lost in the attic. But those magazines had the recipes for these lost food treasures.

The more I though about it the more I remembered. The advertisements had a beautiful brunette housewife in a dress and apron in her itchen of gleaming white appliances and the ingredients for making these splendid treats spread out on the table. To make ambrosia you needed Delmonte canned diced fruit. Delmonte was the sponsor of the ad. To make jello mold, of course, you needed jello and that was the sponsor. Then I remembered the Campbell soup recipes - the cream of mushroom which mixed with canned tuna made a delicious casserole, especially if topped with canned roasted onion strips or potato sticks.

Although I ate all of the above dishes, I can't say I ever made any. I really never became that aproned queen of the kitchen, I was, instead, a wage slave and my cooking amounted to putting things in the microwave from the frozen food section of the Supermarket. Was it healthier? I don't know - canned or frozen? Your guess is as good as mine.

As of now, my food choices are very simple and very spare. I eat Siggi's yoghurt with walnuts, bare naked cereal with almond milk, and cheese and pickles with Daves' multi seed bread. Also I have a lot of beverages like lots of pulp orange juice, low sodium V8 juice, apple cider and coconut water. Also I drink a 30 g protein drink (Premier Protein) every day, sometimes two.

I don't eat enough vegetables but I do get Chinese vegetarian delight sometimes on brown rice and their veg soup, and I often buy Pat's Select's creamy potato soup to which I add peas and corn. That's it. I guess I eat like an astronaut without the proper calculations for nutrition, but I am 80 years old and predominantly vegetarian since 1970, so I guess I am ok nutrition wise. I could do better but the truth is I don't care that much about food. I jsut want to be fed.