Chill with fancy-flavored ice pops

The blithe attributes of the Haymarket Farmers Bazaar prevails Saturday mornings in animosity of the adamant heat.

Regardless of what you’re searching for (mixed greens, dupe cheese, beginning or broiled tomatoes, eggs, enchiladas, doughnuts, artwork, handmade rugs or backyard ornaments), you are adequate to acquisition it.

Throngs of shoppers change a allotment of the booths, talking to vendors, alert to musicians, smelling the aperitive aromas and snapping up bargains.

Tucked a allotment of the booths beneath a red covering in foreground of the Lincoln Station on Seventh Street you’ll acquisition Jill Thayer, her parents Ernie and Carol Thayer and her ice-pop business that she calls Pop Art. If you aberrate by after acquainted the multicolored, gourmet ice pops, you would absence out on a refreshingly cool, all-natural treat.

Most of us would alarm the icy treat-on-a-stick a Popsicle, but that's in actuality a name trademarked by Unilever; Thayer calls her arctic treats pop ice. Flavors cover birthmark lemonade, blackberry mojito, adequate pie, mango chipotle, pineapple basil, chocolate-dip birthmark and peanut-butter banana.

Thayer grows a lot of of her own excellent and basil for the pops, and she buys beginning fruit, such as strawberries, from the CROPS (Combining Resources, Opportunities and Humans for Sustainability) association gardens. The dairy- and gluten-free ancestor accept no preservatives or bogus flavors or colors.

Thayer gets the abstract for her ancestor by binding beginning fruit, and if abacus sugar, she uses turbinado sugar.

“I accept an adapter now for my KitchenAid to abstract the fruit," she said. "Most ancestor accommodate lemon, lime, orange or pineapple juice, and hand-squeezing all of that bake-apple became too time-consuming.”

Originally from Hastings, Thayer confused to Lincoln added than six years ago and anon fell in adulation with the city.

“There’s consistently something to do," she said, "and it’s a association that absolutely supports art.”

She and her boyfriend/co-owner Rob Liliedahl were vacationing in Nashville, Tenn., if they stumbled aloft a arctic pop angle that congenital beginning bake-apple and abrupt herbs and spices into its treats.

They activated flavors, got the molds, and brought their Pop Art ice ancestor to the bazaar for the aboriginal time this year. Their next closing investment, she said, will be a barrow so she can alter the anchored chest freezer she hauls to the bazaar anniversary week. “Something with wheels,” she said. “It’s abstract carriage this freezer around.”

Once the operation becomes portable, Thayer dreams of demography the arctic treats to altogether parties, babyish showers, weddings and contest such as Jazz in June. With an eye on approaching possibilities, Thayer acutely enjoys the market.

“This is a blast," she said. "It’s so abundant fun getting actuality and affair people. I adulation affairs the ice pops, and watching kids get them all over their faces.”

One of the added kid-friendly flavors is the birthmark lemonade pop. "It's absolutely sour," 10-year-old Liam Raasch of Lincoln said. He smiles and shrugs, “I like it. I’d apparently eat addition one.” As his mom, Christy, tasted her pop, she said, “It’s great! There are absolute strawberries in here.”

As for me, I didn’t accept a chance. Jell-O was array of congenital in to my character. It was one allotment ancestry accumulated with one allotment cartography and one allotment religion. I grew up in a German-Lutheran ancestors in the high Midwest. It was appealing abundant a accustomed that I would end up accepting albino hair and admiring Jell-O.

We Lutherans accept a appropriate accord with Jell-O. It’s a little accepted actuality that three of the 95 Theses that Martin Luther formed assimilate the aperture of the abbey at Wittenberg in 1417 anxious Jell-O alertness (just assurance me on this; don’t attending it up). Luther, forth with autograph his “Little Catechism,” aswell coined the phrase, “There’s consistently allowance for Jell-O,” something that sounds abundant acknowledgment in the aboriginal German.

But as my acquaintance on the Fourth of July demonstrated, Jell-O adulation is about added than area you go to church. Jell-O is a ambrosia for peoples of all faiths, ethnicities and zip codes. It is abnormally adorable on a hot summer day if the cool, fruity flavors cook on the tongue.

So why are so abounding of us abashed to accept to our Jell-O love? I anticipate there are assorted reasons. One is that in our Top Chef/Martha Stewart world, Jell-O seems a bit déclassé. It’s array of like acceptance that you still accept to your 45 annal if your accompany are all downloading music files.

Another acumen is harder to admit. Over the years, we Jell-O lovers accept done some abhorrent things to this dessert. Everything from marshmallows (my favorite) to Mandarin oranges (slightly beneath acceptable) to canned ham and olives (disgusting) has been abeyant in gelatin. So abounding bad Jell-O recipes abide that James Lilek’s “Gallery of Regrettable Food” adherent two capacity to gelatin-based recipes.