Jell-O of Doom

I made a grave miscalculation. I thought that Jell-O Classic Recipes was going to be an easy cookbook.  I did not count of my lack of patience, or that I was going to have a breakdown of logic.  I think that any one that has the foresight and the planning to make at least half of the recipes, deserve an award. Almost every step requires you to wait at least an hour before you do the next step. It is not one of those throw together desserts that turn out awesome.  Jell-O is a dessert that you need to be committed with plenty of hours to spare.  I do not deserve any sort of award for patience when it comes to Jell-O, in face after this little experiment I might deserve an award for creating the most god-awful concoction ever in less than six hours with four ingredients.  You may think that I am exaggerating, but alas and alack I am not spinning a tale.  

Creamy Fruited Mold looked deceptively simple.  Pick any flavor of Jell-O, add any fruit to the mix and add whipped cream. I think I took “Any Fruit” a  little too liberally. Cranberries are a super fruit, or at least I have been lead to believe this through various media outlets.  Cranberries and Jell-O are not friends.  I thought that if I used a strawberry flavored Jell-O, that I find too sweet and added the tart little berry, the flavor would mellow each other out and it would be a symphony on the taste buds. 

It was a symphony of discord. If I was have truly thought this out, I might have realized that the whipped cream was going to cut down on the sweet factor of the strawberry and that perhaps whole cranberries were not best fruit to use.  I did not think this through. It wasn’t until I took a heaping spoonful of pink fluff with the cranberries lurking inside did I get the realization that I had done something really wrong. 

Chomping into a spoonful of raw cranberries made me feel like an old Gusher commercial where my insides where trying to be my outsides and that death might be a true option to escape the utter tartness of this super fruit.  There was a moment where my jaws locked up and my eyes began to water. Cranberries were not a good idea.  In fact they were a bad idea. A very bad idea and I wasn’t sure if I was ever going to be able to move my mouth again since it had seized up. The clenching of my jaw caused me to salivate, and eventually diluted the extreme cranberry flavor, which slowly unclenched my jaw, all the while drooling on myself.  I made a grave miscalculation and created the Jell-O of Doom.  

It seems like every step forward I make in harnessing my skills in the kitchen, I end up taking a step backwards in the weirdest way.  Lesson learned, don’t trust Jell-O when they say “any fruit” and never trust a cranberry. They will both betray you in the end. 

Cook Book Challenge Slacker

I am slacking in my cookbook challenge. It isn’t that I am not using the cookbooks, but more that I am not writing about what I am doing.  This is going to be a somewhat long post of me playing catch up on the cookbooks that I have used in the effort that it will keep me on track.

I have a sweet tooth. I have discovered this. I did not think that I did, until I really looked at my cookbooks.  I was pleasantly surprised by my Cookies cookbook.  I found a recipe that took me a little bit out of my comfort zone, because it used fresh cranberries. I like cranberries. I like cranberries juiced and mixed with vodka.  This recipe involved chocolate, and in my mind the tart of the cranberry and the rich taste of chocolate would balance each other out into something passable. What I did not expect from the Cranberry and Chocolate Squares was that it would turn out so decadent. The recipe was easy, and because of this I made the bars three times and have probably given myself a cavity on the richness of it.  This recipe I will do again. I will also lie to myself and say that I get an acceptable amount of Vitamin C in my diet from eating a whole pan of chocolate cranberry bars.

Just to prove that I don’t just own cookbooks that have to deal with baking, I thought I would utilize a chicken cookbook that my friend, GAT gave me.  It is probably one of the more embarrassing cookbooks on my shelf, mostly because I don’t participate in the program.  It is a Weight Watchers Everyone Loves  Chicken cookbook.  There is nothing wrong with Weight Watchers, and it works for lots of people, I however have never partaken of the program. I just wanted chicken recipes.  Leafing through the pages I discovered little tidbits of information, such as Hunter Style Chicken and Chicken Cacciatore were the same thing. I flipped through the book several times, before I decided to make the Hunter Chicken.  I love mushrooms, my husband not so much. He says they taste like feet and have a way of permeating a meal, because of this mushrooms were omitted and while it was a good meal, it was missing something and that something was most likely mushrooms.  I am undecided if I will ever try this recipe again. It was a nice change from the sweets, but did nothing to dazzle the taste buds.

Lastly I utilized the Recipes from the Raleigh Tavern Bakery. This book was a gift from my mother in law from some of her many travels.  She had brought me a cook book, along with some rather delicious gingerbread cookies.  The cookies were the size of a small child's head. That could be a slight exaggeration, but only a slight one, since the cookies were huge. The cookbook had a quaint historic feel to them, and seemed simple enough.  Deciding on trying an oatmeal cookie did not turn out as well as one would hope. In fact it made me wonder if I had any sort of baking ability at all, since they did not tantalize the taste buds in the slightest. There was molasses in the cookie, which I think added to the weirdness factor. There was also a point in making the cookies, which it seemed like there was something missing, either an ingredient or an extra step somewhere, because it didn’t seem to come together. I think this is the first time in my adult life, that I have made cookies that no one was the slightest bit interested in eating.  I almost feel like my cook books are going to be taken away from me, because of this kitchen failure.  It is now getting closer to the holidays and I have to wonder if I should experiment on the influx of company or if I should stick to tried and true recipes that won’t kill people.  Jury is still out and I have too many of 63 cookbooks to get through before the end of June.