Why? Because it’s delicious. And it doesn’t even have to be “real” JELL-O brand flavored gelatin dessert!

My recent infatuation started when I was recently having difficulty wanting not to throw up while trying to eat. Granted, JELL-O is pretty much water, sugar, and calf feet, with practically no nutritional value, but holy crap it’s sooo good!

In fact, I’ve recently been experimenting with flavor combinations! Yeah, yeah, not new ground, I know, but I threw together an orange-cherry mix, and, just tonight, I created Cherry Limeade! Oh, sure, the color looks more like Cherry Raw Sewage, but it tastes so much better than that! (I think.)

I used to be ridiculously impatient while waiting for the gelatin to set: who wants to wait four hours — FOUR HOURS?! — while his wacky, wiggly dessert reforms into a delectable colloidal suspension? No one, that’s who. Here’s what I do:

1. Boil about a cup of water, maybe a little more. (Approximating makes it so much more of an adventure! Just ignore the directions on the b — I SAID IGNORE THE BOX!!!)
2. Quickly pour the contents of a so-called “four servings” sized box (more like four mouthfuls — yes, I have a big mouth) into the boiling water; stir until it’s completely dissolved. (The gelatin, not the box, which you’ll have to remove from the boiling water if, for some reason, you tossed it in there.)
3. Quickly throw a few handfuls of ice cubes into the dissolved gelatin. Maybe the equivalent of a cup and a half, two cups of liquid water.
4. Stir until the ice cubes have mostly melted. (At this point, if you did it right, you’ll probably already have soft-set gelatin!) Remove any unmelted ice fragments.
5. If you did it wrong, just toss the whole thing in the fridge and wait until your ineptitude has been sufficiently punished (that is, until the JELL-O sets, which still should be much less than FOUR HOURS!!! RARGH!).

Sometimes — and I swear, you’ve got to keep this between you and me! — I like to just drink the semi-set gelatin, like it’s some kind of viscously succulent alien sludge!

Oh, I should be headed to bed, but now I think I’ve talked myself into another JELL-O bender…