Some people say that fruitcakes are the worst food of the holiday season. I beg to differ.

Jello desserts with cottage cheese are yucky.

Let me repeat, jello desserts with cottage cheese are yucky. 

Especially green ones.  Runner up for worst holiday food is any kind of casserole with canned biscuits, cream soups, and mayonnaise as the three main ingredients. Toss in a casserole with broccoli, cheez whiz,  cheezits, and cream of chicken soup and you have the worst offenders in church fellowship dinners.  Has the Barna research group ever studied the effect of poor potlucks on church growth rates? [Perhaps the National Institutes of Health would be a better group to conduct the study....]

Thankfully, the women at Friendship are excellent cooks. Not that that should be a reason to choose a church, but it is a delightful side benefit, to be sure. Marie's coconut cream pies and Miz Ruby's chicken and dumplings and Gail's banana puddings are the stuff of legend at Friendship.

I once had to eat green jello salad at a local church fellowship hall---notice I didn't say it was my church----with a smile to avoid a scene. It was a have-to case. This sweet lady was bound and determined not to take leftovers home and came around to tables spooning out green jello sludge [forgive me] onto every plate with some empty space. Slighting a Baptist woman's favorite dessert dish is just something not done. I don't think it lessens rewards in Heaven, but it may shorten lifespans, if you get my drift.

My mother would have turned in her grave had I hid my plate and ran [what I really wanted to do.]  No, I was raised to take my green jello with cottage cheese and smile anyway.

Bless her heart, she was so grateful for my smile that she sent the rest of the bowl home with me. May the Lord , that determined church lady,  and the great state of Tennessee forgive me, but that spot on Highway 411 South where I dumped it out still won't grow grass.....well, maybe I'm exaggerating a bit....

Jello salads with cottage cheese are yucky UNLESS they are made by my Mamaw Mayme, now with the Lord, or Miz Ruby--my 91 one year old dear friend that I'm so glad to have. This woman can do anything. She's planning on trying to do a little gardening if she can get one of her 74 grand- or great-grand children to plow  her garden in the spring.

Everyone ought to have a friend like Miz Ruby. She knows her Bible backwards and forwards, she's funny, she's the ideal Mamaw, and she's my Titus 2 mentor. Oh, she doesn't call herself  that, but she takes the job of instructing younger women in the faith  and matters of the home very seriously.

And at her age she's got the credentials to do it, too. After sixty years of marriage, eight children, grand-great- and great-great grandchildren, and several local churches that all claim her as the "honorary Mamaw",  I'd say that Miz Ruby is certainly a Titus 2 woman. She is my dear friend. I've spent a lot of time with her on the phone just prasing the Lord, talking about the Bible, or letting her teach me how to REALLY cook. [She just told me this weekend the secret to her almost coveted chicken and dumplings--and I'm not telling until I'm her age!]

Merry Christmas, Miz Ruby. I love you.

Oh, here's Miz Ruby's Lime Salad recipe.  Whip some cream cheese and add a box of lime jello, small can of crushed pineapple [partially drained] , some chopped pecans, and a tub of sugar free cool whip. Spread it in a rectangular baking pan to "set up" . It sounds suspiciously  like the ingredients in all those other jello sludgy--treats. Must be the Mamaw touch that makes it so good.

Well, I won't be blogging for the next couple of days. I've got two family dinners to cook for---that's my present, I love fixing food for dear ones---and will be just celebrating the Lord's birth rather than blogging. Merry Christmas one and all!