Jelly – what does it make you think of? Perhaps it conjures images of a childhood dessert or those scrumptious squidgy fruit sweets, or sandals or the sea side strewn with strange see-through, lumpen monsters. It also happens to be one of my nicknames, so this week I’m taking a trip down jelly lane.
Wobble-wobble, wobble wobble, jelly on a plate. What happened to this simple pleasure? I think I might bring it back into my life. Of course I’m not the first to think of it – there’s a bit of an arty craze for fancy jellies going on at the moment:
Just look at this evocation of St Paul’s by jelly artists Bompas & Parr who ‘explore that space between food and architecture’. Great photo by Greta Illieva. Of course the Victorians knew a thing or two about jellies, both sweet and savoury.
I also have a bit of a thing for fruit jellies – the sweets that is. New Berry Fruits with their liquid centres were a bit of a delight in childhood:
but now that I’m a grown up I have up graded to ‘pate de fruit’ – same thing only a bit more elegant with flavours like pomegranate and blood orange.
Of course jelly does have its down side too. I personally can’t stand anything in aspic, no matter how beautiful it looks:
Tasty if you like that sort of thing – aspic hard boiled eggs, tuna, ricotta and olives. I’d rather have jelly shoes:
Jelly shoes are really quite a phenomenon – they’re great for kids at the beach – indestructible, cheap and very cheerful, they metamorphose every now and then into grown up high end fashion, with heels:
with sparkle:
boots:
and slip ons.
All rather lovely – what you don’t want to do is slip on one of these on the beach.
Apologies – this is not a great place to end my jelly journey so I suggest you scroll back to the top for a happy jelly thought.
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