I'm So Jell-ous!

My fascination with Jell-o and Jell-o based products began from a young age. I was confronted with the stuff on a daily basis as my dad's restaurant was the sort of place where one could order a small cube of canned fruit filled Jell-o rather than the more conventional side salad or cup of soup to serve as the opening act in what would end up being an extremely filling but highly forgettable meal. I went on to buy several Jell-o shape cutters during my elementary years. If I was going to continue to eat Jell-o, I thought, I was going to eat it in the form of a star, or a man, or a brontosaurus.

My passion for this mass of impossibly solid liquid continued through the holidays where, on Thanksgiving, I indulged in my mother's translucent cranberry orange Jell-o, and on Christmas, I took on her opaque pistachio Jell-o. Both of these feats of late twentieth century culinary taboo were spectacular, serving as both a centerpiece to the table and a reasonable side-dish to an otherwise overly savory meal. As I went to college, my Jell-o consumption surprisingly increased even further, but this mostly in the form of completely disgusting Jell-o shots that may or may not have contained vodka, thus making my inebriated states either real, or completely psychological.

I reminisce like so because I am reminded today of yet another failed business plan. I've been wanting to get into the Jell-o business for a few year. Jell-o business? Exactly, no one is really in the business of making massive complex Jell-os with flavors you would have never thought to put in a Jell-o, molded into shapes you never thought possible given Jell-o's physical properties. This is how I introduce Sam and Harry, the 25 year old British boys that have successfully started their own Jell-o business. They've made some pretty bizarre things including a replica of St. Paul's Cathedral and a food-safe quinine (it glows in the dark).

To clarify, Jell-o, in the UK, is called jelly. I'm not sure why this is. It certainly caused me endless confusion as the string of word substitutions is amazingly complex. Jell-o becoming jelly, means that jelly needs to become jam, and that jam needs to be called preserve (maybe?) and that preserve is just not eaten or mixed with eel to be called jellied eel, which leads to vacuums being called hoovers, and me being called a tosser.

Anyway, these boys stole my dream. I hope they are having fun with it. One thing the three of us certainly agree on is that it's all about the wobble.