What do you get asked to bring?

I was thinking about Christmas, and family meals, and how we usually volunteer to bring something. I was asked to bring Spiced Peach Jello mostly because I am Jello-girl in our family. (I'm not complaining, it's just who I've become. Mike loves jell-o, so I make it.) I wanted to share the recipe here in case anyone wants to try it out. We've been making this recipe for so long the recipe card that I am transcribing I copied down when I was 15 years old, on February 15th 1985.

Spiced Peach Jello

2-4 cans (depending on size of cans) to equal about 2 lbs of sliced cling peaches
1/2 cup white vinegar
1 cup granulated sugar (yes, we're going to add sugar to jell-o)
14 whole cloves (if you only use the ones with the ball at the top still attached or only the ones that don't have it then you won't have to wonder if you lost a spice ball or not. Either they'll all be there or they won't.)
1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1 large box of orange or peach or orange pineapple jello
1 1/2 cup cold water

Drain peaches, measuring 1 1/2 cups syrup, chop peaches coarsly. Bring syrup, vinegar, sugar, and spices slowly to a boil. Add peaches, simmer 10 minutes. At this point I pour the contents into my colander with a large measuring cup underneath the colander or I have the colander sitting in a large bowl with a 1 cup or larger measuring cup under the colandar so I can measure the syrup as it drains out. The peaches will be left in the colander with the cloves. Strain syrup and discard cloves. (yes, you dig thru the peaches with a fork and count very carefully to make sure you get all the cloves out. You don't want a guest to bite down on a clove!) Hopefully you now have 2 cups of hot syrup. If you don't have enough, add boiling water to bring it to 2 cups. Dissolve Jello gelatin in hot syrup. Add cold water and peaches, chill until slightly thickend, then pour into mold. (Or put it straight into a bowl and be done with it.) Chill until firm.

For a while I got lazy about making this and rather than stewing the peaches in the syrup I would just toss them in at the end. My sister prefers this method because she feels the peaches get too soft in the cooked method. But everyone ate them so I don't know what to say. Maybe next time she'll get her way. *grin*

Thanks Mom for letting me into your recipe file all those years ago! I love you!