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After 50 years of living in America, I am finally an American: Today I made (and ate) a jello salad with carrots in it. It was the Saturday of a holiday weekend, and someone suggested that we do jello salad as the recipe this week. I had to test and adapt the recipe before I could put it on the page, so....
Apparently, salads that have carrot and pineapple suspended in them are as American as, I don’t know, Crisco pie crusts and Chevy trucks and are an important addition to picnic table meals across the nation.
So, here’s the health angle: Traditional jello salads are made with Jell-O brand products, which have sugar and chemicals and preservatives in them. If for some reason you are a modern healthy person but still want to put a jello salad on the table, then you’ll want to use Knox Gelatine mixed with fruit juice as the base.
Let me emphasize that this is not a dessert. It’s a side dish. This was explained to me by the grandmother of our lovely and talented Lakeville Journal intern, Gwen Craig. Gwen swore to me that her grandmother is an expert at jello salads, that these salads always have carrot in them and that they are in fact delicious.
“Everyone likes them,” Doris Grauel said, when I called her at her home in Monroe last week. “I always have to double the recipe.”
The recipe that Grauel uses is from the Betty Crocker cookbook and uses Jell-O brand gelatin. I adapted it, using the instructions on the Knox Gelatine package. The concept here is that Knox is a completely chemical- and sugar-free product. There’s only one ingredient listed on the box: gelatin.
Carrot and pineapple salad
Two 1-ounce packets of unflavored Knox Gelatine; 1/2 cup cold orange juice; 1 1/2 cups orange juice heated to boiling; 1/4 teaspoon salt; 1/4 cup finely grated carrot; 1/4 cup pineapple chopped into small pieces
Sprinkle the gelatin over the cold juice in a large bowl and let it stand for one minute. Add the hot juice and salt and stir until the gelatin is completely dissolved (it seems like the gelatin dissolves immediately, but the Knox package recommends stirring for a full five minutes; bring a book or your iPod if you get bored easily). Refrigerate for 30 to 45 minutes, until the gelatin is thick but not set.
Stir in the carrot and pineapple (sometimes fresh pineapple can keep the gelatin from setting; I didn’t have that problem but if you want to be ultra-safe, use canned pineapple).
At this point, you can spoon the whole thing into a decorative mold (if you’re keenly interested in how to do this, go online to www.jellomoldmistress.com, which is actually a great cooking website even if it is devoted exclusively to jello).
Keep it in the ’fridge for another two hours. Knox Gelatine gets very firm when set, so you can actually let it sit on a picnic table for a couple of hours and it won’t melt.
Panna cotta is an Italian version of jello — a sweet, creamy dessert gelatin. Basic panna cotta is flavored with vanilla, which makes it an excellent base for any kind of sliced fruit combinations; such as mango and pineapple, or mixed berries to offset the creamy custard.
Panna cotta
Adapted from “The All New Good Housekeeping Cookbook”
Makes eight servings
1 envelope unflavored gelatin; 1 cup milk; 1 1/2 teaspoons vanilla extract; 1 3/4 cups heavy cream; 1/4 cup sugar; 1 cinnamon stick
Evenly sprinkle the gelatin over the milk and let it stand for two minutes.
In a deep saucepan, combine the cream, sugar, cinnamon stick; heat to boiling over high heat, stirring occasionally.
Reduce heat and simmer, stirring occasionally, 5 minutes. Stir in the milk and gelatin. Cook over low heat, stirring frequently, until the gelatin has completely dissolved, 2 to 3 minutes.
Discard the cinnamon stick and stir in the vanilla extract.
Pour the cream mixture into a medium bowl set in a large bowl of ice water. With a rubber spatula, stir the mixture until it just begins to set, 10 to 12 minutes.
Pour into eight 4-ounce ramekins. Cover and refrigerate them until they are well chilled and set, four hours or overnight.
To unmold the panna cotta, run the tip of a knife around the edges. Tap the side of each ramekin sharply to break the seal. Invert onto individual serving plates and serve with fresh fruit and a sprig of mint.
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Telecom Reg’s Best Kept On the Books
When Connecticut land-use commissions update their regulations, it seems like a no-brainer to jettison old telecommunications regulations adopted decades ago during a short-lived period when municipalities had authority to regulate second generation (2G) transmissions prior to the Connecticut Siting Council (CSC) being ordered by a state court in 2000 to regulate all cell tower infrastructure as “functionally equivalent” services.
It is far better to update those regs instead, especially for macro-towers given new technologies like small cells. Even though only ‘advisory’ to the CSC, the preferences of towns by law must be taken into consideration in CSC decision making. Detailed telecom regs – not just a general wish list -- are evidence that a town has put considerable thought into where they prefer such infrastructure be sited without prohibiting service that many – though not all – citizens want and that first responders rely on for public safety.
Such regs come in handy when egregious tower sites are proposed in sensitive areas, typically on private land. The regs are a town’s first line of defense, especially when cross referenced to plans of conservation and development, P&Z regulations, and wetlands setbacks. They identify how/where the town plans to intersect with the CSC process. They are also a roadmap for service providers regarding preferred sites and sometimes less neighborhood contention. In fact, to have no telecom regs can weaken a town’s rights to protect environmental, scenic, and historic assets, and serve up whole neighborhoods to unnecessary overlapping coverage and corporate overreach. Such regs are unique to every town and should not follow anyone else’s boiler plate, especially industry’s.
Connecticut is the only state that has a centralized siting entity for cell towers. The good news is that applicants must prove need for new tower sites in an evidentiary proceeding and any decisions have the weight of the state behind them. The bad news is that the CSC used to be far less industry-friendly and rote in their reviews, which now resemble a check list. There is an operative assumption at CSC that if an applicant wants a tower, they must need it, otherwise why spend significant money to run the approval gauntlet? This reflects a subtle shift over the years at CSC from sincere willingness to protect the environment toward minimal tweaking of bad applications with minor changes. The bottom line is that towns really cannot rely on the CSC to do all the work for them.
What CSC issues telecom providers is a “certificate of environmental compatibility” after an evidentiary proceeding (not unlike a court case) with intervenors, parties, expert witnesses, and the service provider’s technical pro’s sworn in and subject to cross examination. Service providers get to do the same with any opposition from intervenor/party participants – like towns and citizens -- and their experts. It’s an impressive process whose ultimate goal is the fine balancing between allowing adequate/reliable public services and protecting state ecology with minimal damage to scenic, historic, and recreational values. They unfortunately often fall short of their mandate – like approving cell towers with diesel generators over town aquifers -- evidenced by CSC only rejecting about five cell towers in the past 15-20 years.
The CSC was founded in 1972 and clarified its mission in the 1980’s to prevent the state from being carved up willy-nilly by gas pipelines, high tension corridors, and broadcast towers. With the sudden proliferation of cell towers beginning in late 1990’s, it became the most sued agency in Connecticut by both an arrogant upstart industry if applications were denied and by towns/citizens when bad sites were forced on them. CSC gradually formed a defensive posture that drives their decisions toward industry with deeper pockets and attorneys on retainer.
For citizens, nothing can wreck one’s day like the CSC. It behooves towns to protect what little toolkit they have, and understand the legal parameters of the CSC’s playing field. The CSC is not a “normal” government agency where municipal/citizen redress is based on logic and local support. Their process is largely immune to everything but specific kinds of evidence – like town regs with setbacks/fall zones, radio frequency transmission signal strengths, sensitive areas identified, and detailed wildlife inventory, among others.
There is a current cell tower fight involving two intervening towns -- Washington and Warren; both with good cell tower regs – over a tower site within 1200’ of a Montessori School, near Steep Rock’s nature preserves with comprehensive geology/wildlife databases that include endangered, threatened and special concern flora and fauna, on established federal/state migratory bird flyways, within throwing distance to a historic site capable of being listed on the Underground Railroad, and with an access road on a blind curve entering a state highway that will permanently damage wetlands, vernal pools, and core forests. There are well credentialed environmental experts, including Dr. Michael Klemens, former chair of Salisbury’s P&Z, as well as the former director of migratory bird management at the US Fish and Wildlife Service, and an RF engineer testifying to alternative approaches, plus three attorneys representing intervenors. It is the most professional challenge I have seen at CSC since Falls Village successfully mounted one that protected Robbins Swamps several years ago.
The hearing is ongoing, with uncertain results. To see what it takes today to stop an inappropriate tower siting, see Docket #543 under “Pending Matters” at https://portal.ct.gov/csc before removing local cell tower regs – the lowest hanging fruit that any town can possess in case it’s needed.
B, Blake Levitt is the Communications Director at The Berkshire-Litchfield Environmental Council. She writes about how technology affects biology.