STEINBACH, MB
Every Thanksgiving thousands of Mennonites find themselves without the necessary means to make the traditional pistachio salad from the EMMC ladies cookbook, because the stores run out of Jell-o pistachio instant pudding mix weeks before the big day. The pudding shortage had baffled Mennonites for decades, but the mystery has now been solved as Tina B. Janzen has turned herself into authorities and confessed to hoarding the prized ingredient.
“Every year in the middle of September I go to all the grocery stores and buy up all the pistachio pudding mix,” said Janzen. “I know it’s wrong, but I just wanted to be the most popular one at the church potluck. I got used to all the attention from being the only one with the Watergate salad.”
Janzen says she sometimes would use the little green boxes to barter with other church ladies, often asking for five or ten times its retail value in trade.
“I let a few boxes out of my possession, but you’d have to really make it worth my while,” said Janzen. “I’m not going to just give it away.”
Janzen said she took great pleasure is seeing all the mandarin orange and cottage cheese salads, knowing full well that this was the second, if not third, choice of her fellow church ladies.
“No one wants to be the lady with the inferior fruit-based salad,” said Janzen, who confessed to the crime after a particularly moving sermon last Sunday. “But I realized it just wasn’t right for me to hoard the pudding mix like this. I’m truly sorry.”
Upon hearing that Mrs. Janzen would no longer be buying up all the pistaticho instant pudding mix in the region, rival potlucker Mrs. Edna Loewen seized the opportunity and bought fifteen full cases of the stuff.
“Look out, world!” said Loewen. “There’s a new pistachio salad queen in town!”
(Photo credit: by stevendepolo/CC)