Off the Cuff / My Other Journal

Jell-o...ooo.oo.o.oh!

Jell-o is sexy. Anything that quivers and shakes with whipped cream on top has got to be sexy. Probably that is why it is so popular. You know, sex sells…

Sex may sell, but I didn’t know until recently that jell-o’s fancy crystalline powder base was gelatin from pig bones. I learned this from the news, which showed some people whose religions abhorred anything of pork fall apart. They were rebelling against a situation that some of them were served jell-o in the hospitals where they were recuperating from one malady or another. Then I realized that there is no warning on the jell-o packages about pig material.

I used to make sugar-free jell-o for my husband when he dieted. Not that the diet stuck, but I loved making the jell-o, adding hot water to its base, and watching its sparkles and crystals separate into color and silt. It gave off its sweet aroma of desire, with strawberry or watermelon as my favorites. Stirring and stirring the mixture until it turned to clear liquid was a delight whose memory still makes my toes curl.

How could I know I was dissolving a pig? This came like a Jack-in-the-box surprise. I had surmised jell-o’s base was plant material. Duh! But then, I am so clueless of some things and so not caring about their origins, I wonder how my gray matter keeps the rhythm and the momentum going. Are other people as oblivious as I am to the origin of things?

What’s in what or who will do where, when? Facing the probability of my shallowness, I’m bewildered.