In Which We Gel

How do you get gelatin? Originally, it was just the boiled down remains of slaughtering, horns and hooves and fish heads, all the crap nobody wanted to eat.  It was the scrap of scraps.  It rendered out a squishy, fairly clear glop.  Some misguided chef somewhere realized you could suspend more edible bits in it and, voila, in a marketing masterpiece, they called it aspic and somehow it became fancy.  No excessively fancy Victorian or Edwardian dinner was complete without it.  It was not sweet particularly, but was often part of the fish or meat course. Food scientists discovered an easier way to make it, they added sweeteners and fruit flavor and what did they have? They had jello, baby. 

That brings us up to the madness of the post-World War II era.  Homemakers of the time were wild for any product that made the drudgery of domestic life easier.  Canned food, frozen food, and anything labeled "instant" was a big hit.  Jello fit right in plus it had the added panache of aspic's reputation as gourmet grub.  Bridge clubs everywhere were swept up in a frenzy for it.  "The girls" couldn't get enough; a luncheon consisting of coffee, cigarettes, gin, jello, and gossip was guaranteed to get you through another week of your loveless marriage and those fucking kids.  

Hearkening back to its roots as a medium in which you could suspend all manner of random crap, recipes proliferated claiming to be "salads" since that implied health and slenderizing. One of the most popular of those so-called salads was for Ambrosia, which was a mixture of jello, whipped cream, canned fruit cocktail, and the always disgusting dried coconut.  

As a baby gay in the mid-60s, how mrpeenee longed for Ambrosia without coconut.  Dried coconut, in mrpeenee's unshakable opinion, is unfit for human consumption.  I would just as soon chow down on a piece of shag carpeting.  mrpeenee's mother (mapeenee) absolutely refused to consider this very minor modification.  "Coconut is in the recipe," she would state adamantly.  A recipe in her world was something that might as well have been etched in stone.  Looking back I can only sympathize with the poor dear.  She had four kids and a husband whose only contribution to housework was to open yet another bottle of cheap scotch. Her life was not easy breezy.

But that was then, and now it's a new day, a day in which mrpeenee is fully capable of making his own damn jello, anyway that I want to.  The internet was only too happy to provide me with thousands of recipes for ambrosia.  I landed on one called Orange Fluff which expanded its madness to include Cool Whip, miniature marshmallows, and vanilla instant pudding in the mix.  I have now made it twice and it is just as delicious as I dreamed all those many years ago in the suburban swamps which formed me. 

I know this kind of cooking (or "cooking".  The preparation only calls for boiling water and stirring) is often sneered at, but I am here to vouch that it is tasty in the extreme.  It may not be Julia Childs, but neither am I.  What it is is a product of those mid-century women's magazines just as much as I am.  Here's to you ladies. 

Boys for whom I would firm up: 

That's what I need to help me in the kitchen.

Boeuf al a mode

Just a simple boy wondering where the fuck his underwear is.

Wheeee

There are some men for whom clothes are not only overrated, they are almost a crime.

Exhibit A

The strain of trying to think.  Don't bother sweetie, it's not what you were meant for.