Jello

 

So it comes from horses’ toenails and it’s sugary and artificially colored and everybody snickers at the very mention. But I keep it on hand—the store brand, usually orange. Somebody in our nearby family might be just getting over a stomach flu, and as we all know, any nourishment a person’s weakened system can keep down is better than no intake, period. Because the mother over there doesn’t want jello in her cupboards, I’ll make some with peaches floating in it and take it over to much rejoicing.

But I needed the strawberry flavor the other week for a dessert recipe I was itching to try. I didn’t have any strawberry.

The top layer involves adding to the jello frozen strawberries, which sounded to me a bit morbid because frozen strawberries get mushy. In our freezer, though, were crushed strawberries, highly sugared. Those can stay good for days in the fridge. And I had two packets of plain gelatin, maybe 15 years old, which I could include, along with water. I figured I could make do.

What a soggy mess that was.

I’d already prepared the dessert’s bottom and middle layers. Meaning, I’d already smashed the pretzels for the crust, mixed in the sugar and the shocking amount of melted butter called for, and baked the crust to a sizzling caramel-y crispiness, and I’d already cooled it, and I’d already layered on the sweetened cream cheese-and-whipped cream fluff. I wasn’t going to top all that with my pallid smush.

So I made my orange gelatin instead, adding lovely canned store apricots, sliced into tiny moons, squishy soft.

That was the only good part—the top. I skimmed it off after we ate some of all three layers, almost enough to make us sick, and then I threw out what was left in the pan. I pushed the crunchy pretzels down the drain. I let the cream-cheese fluff melt away beneath the spigot. I kept the orange part in a jar, and off and on, we tucked in.

I can’t say the fluff was a disaster. It was more, like, useless. More without virtue. No redeeming value, just totally fat. What made the pretzel crust obnoxious, too, was the overload of butter.

I have in mind, now, to try a baked cheesecake with that crust—still the butter, just not a whopping stick and a half. The middle, I’ll use Ruth’s recipe, lush like a cheesecake is supposed to be but not at all revolting. The plain cold crushed sweetened strawberries can go on top, if anything has to go on top. I don’t see why, though. Why detract from the cheesecake taste? Thinking you must drizzle fruit sauce over is, I think, like thinking you have to put ketchup on your fish. The person thinks that because they don’t really like fish.

If this next thing turns out vile, even worse than those shivery horse-hoof treats that always rile up the jello scoffers, I’ll let you know.