June 12th, 2018

We learn things throughout our lives. Every single day, we learn new things. Some times those things are disappointing.  I do know this.  Life is fraught with disappointment. Here is evidence of my latest new learned thing AND disappointment all rolled into one.

It's not of life altering importance. And in fact, it's not a big deal. But it was interesting because it was new to me and it was disappointing which was a surprise to me and worst of all, it involved jello.

I do not have a great history with jello.  I am not a big fan.   I don't actively dislike it, but it's not something I generally would choose to eat.   Back in the days when I was growing up, jello was a Big  Deal.  In everyone's house that I knew, the Mom's made jello a lot. Even my mom who hated to cook and considered jello making an enormous investment of her time and effort.  They mixed jello with cool whip.  They layered different colours of jello.   They put fruit in it.  They put it in cakes. The chilled it in all sorts of differently shaped dishes (because it tastes different in different dishes?)  Or, in our house, jello layered with ice cream, topped with cool whip and called a parfait. Fine dining for sure.  All fine and good, I suppose.  There is nothing really objectionable about jello, but whatever is done to it, it's still just jello. 

BUT then the evil jello people arrived on the scene.  People like my beloved Nana who showed her evil-ness by taking leftover vegetables, collected through the week, and shoved into green jello which was half chilled in a bundt pan. Then once fully set, turned upside down on a bad of innocent lettuce leaves and put in the middle of the dinner table for dinner with mayo filling the center hold. Yuck. Yuckity yuck. Disgusting.  I have to say here that my Nana, who had very few flaws in my eyes, was probably the most frugal person I've ever met.  When I said that she collected leftover vegetables through the week I mean if there were two peas left on your plate on Monday night and 3 lima beans on Tuesday night those showed up in that nasty green jello things she referred to as a jello salad.  

Then there was the yellow jello from college.  Yellow jello is fun to say.  And that is the only nice thing I have to say about it.  Because I worked full time while I was in college as a full time student, I was very short on time, all of the time.  Therefore I rarely managed to eat at the university cafeteria which is a shame because when you pay room and board that includes a mealplan.  So I was paying for a meal I almost never got to eat. On Sundays however, they only served one meal and it was mid-day. The meal (to my recollection - I could be misremembering)  was always hot dogs (which I also dislike) and the desert was always jello and it was ALWAYS yellow!  And the jello was always oddly chewy.  Should jello be chewy?

So that is my jello history. I find it to be a bizarre almost-a-food.  It's not inherently horrible, but it is light and sweet and if you buy the sugar free one (which I do) not the worst dessert in the world for anyone.  So there was some in my pantry and yesterday I decided to make it. I was low on time and energy but knew that dessert of some sort would be anticipated by the other person in my household, you see?  While I was stirring in the boiling water in, it occurred to me that I have seen ads of pretty little glistening cubes of jello in glass dishes and it's always so pretty. Ok I will try that.

It started out fine.  I made it in a Teflon bread pan so it would be easier to lift out in the little squares. That part was fine.     I put in a smidge less water than normal thinking the cubes would hold their shape better. That part always went fine.  I ever so carefully cut the grid into the jelled raspberry stuff, also went A-OK. 

I carefully lifted out each little cube and gently placed it into the goblet. And it looked absolutely fine until I put in a second and a third.  Now it just looked like messy red jello in a goblet.  They no longer looked like pretty red jiggly cubes. Dang!

Bah!  I brought it to Tim and he contentedly ate it all.  Afterwards I asked if he could tell that the jello was cut into cubes.  He kind of blinked at me for a moment and said, " I'm sorry. Should I have?"  No not really.  Disappointing.  Not his reaction, not that at all.  It was the result of the experiment.  The jello in Tim's goblet looked nothing like the photos I've seen in magazines.  They were not pretty little cubes at all. 

It's most likely operator error.  I find that to usually be the case when anything go awry.  No big deal, no one was injured in the making of that jello and dessert was still served and the world continued to turn.

But I may not make jello again for awhile. Just by way of a very passive act of rebellion.
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That's me, rebel without a proper jello cube.