Personal Narrative: Jell-O

As I was clearing off the DVR and catching up on old episodes of The Martha Stewart Show, I spotted an episode description that said “Jelly Mongers”. I’ve been in a canning mood this summer, so I figured this would be something informative for me to watch. Well, it turns out that it WAS very informative, but it also turned out to NOT be about canned jelly. Of course the “jelly” referred to was Jell-O basically. I know from my studies of historic culinaria (and endlessly watching British movies and TV shows) that at one time (as far back as the Victorian era) Jell-O was VERY popular across the pond. Even here in the U.S. gelatin had its time in the sun, but I think that ended at about the time that I was born (late 70’s) and the Technicolor jigglers are now pretty much the domain of toddlers and drunken college girls. I remember my father being the king of fancy Jell-O when I was small. He would float all manner of chopped fruits in the green and orange goo. He had this Tupperware mold in the shape of a ribbed bowl that had interchangeable disks at the bottom. Once the gel had set and the mold was inverted, you would have any number of holiday related symbols set into the top of your mound. It
The two Jelly Mongers, Harry Parr & Sam Bompas, even create their own molds. Even though the guys weren’t as friendly to Martha as I would have liked, I still loved their work and wanted to try one for myself. Of the two recipes they shared on the show, I chose to make the Champagne & Summer Fruit Wedding Jelly over the Raspberry & Crème Ribband Jelly. You can watch the segment about these here. If you like the idea of making some really creative jelly molds as much as I do, you can check out their book, Jelly Mongers: Glow-in-the-Dark Jelly, Titanic Jelly, Flaming Jelly. I see a million cool books around the web, but I think I might actually have to add this one to my Christmas