I’m in the middle of my after-dinner ritual, which is neither sipping Baileys nor having my feet massaged. I’m making school lunches.
Vivian and William, meanwhile, are waiting for dessert to be served. It’s Jello that their father has cooked – or whatever it is you do to primary-colored gelatin. I don’t like Jello. If I want jiggly goodness, I’ll stare at my thighs.
While I scour the pantry for food items that my twins will eat, I overhear this conversation coming from the table.
“Dad,” William asks, “can we eat Jello like puppy dogs again?”
I pause to contemplate curling up in the fetal position.
“That was funny once,” my husband says. “Till Mommy saw us.”
Vivian says, “We’ll just do it when she isn’t looking.”
I look over, and two kids and one husband are bent over their bowls of glop lapping at them like they’re recently adopted mutts. Which in some way they are.
I jam plastic containers into lunch kits with renewed vigor and scour the pantry again. This time for Baileys.
*
Are there any desserts that you despise? Also on my list are tiramisu and cheesecake. I know: You now wonder if we can be friends.
Are you familiar with Old Greg???? He like Baileys too.
Old who? I know Liz McLellan is a blogger Baileys lover. I haven’t had any since Halloween…
At least you like chocolate. 🙂
Yum…
My poor kiddos have grown up in a Jello-free home because of my inherent texture issues with the jiggly slop.
The only time they get it: The one time per two years we eat AT the local pizza place and I order the salad bar…
What is it about children and their fascination with Jello, anyhow?
Good question. My kids are especially fond of the fluorescent blue Jello they get at the local pizza place. It turns their lips blue so it looks like they’re oxygen deprived. Which they likely are.
I hate tiramisu also. And cannoli. Cheese and sugar should not go together. On the other hand, I would probably be the one letting the kids eat like puppies while my husband got upset for me letting the kids play with their food. I figure if they eat, they eat.
I get that. The irony is that my husband is usually Psycho Man when it comes to dinner table manners. I figure if some of it gets in their mouths, we’re doing well. But it’s funny when the tables turn…
I don’t like tiramisu either. And I only like cheesecake when I get it from the Cheesecake Factory because then I can get the fun flavors that taste more like chocolate than cheese.
I don’t understand the appeal of tiramisu. Even the texture…
Lol! This cracked me up!
I love Tiramisu but don’t really care for cheesecake too much. I don’t like lemon meringue pie. The lemon stuff is usually just from a can and is just gross.
Actually, that lemon stuff is a big disgusting. Good thing I’ve never made a pie.
I like pizza for dessert.
Dessert pizza?
more like, perpetually eating the pizza.
Ha. I read a tip this week on how to heat up cold pizza. In a frying pan! No oil. Keeps the crust crisp. Does me giving cooking tips count as a sign of the apocalypse?
Actually, the best pizza I have ever had has been deep fried. Try it. It’s awesome!
I believe you. As evidence: I love deep fried tofu from a local Korean restaurant…
Argh, I love tiramisu 😛 I don’t like jelly dessert that much, they’re… yes, thighly.
Thighly. We clearly need to start petitioning Merriam-Webster to get that bad-girl adverb added in 2013.
Thankfully, there are no jello fans in this house. Chocolate, on the other hand, is always a good dessert, in almost any form. Just don’t ruin it with coconut. What do people like about that gritty, acrid tasting stuff anyway???
I do love coconut. Sorry. But not always mixed with chocolate. I adore coconut milk, though. Thai soup!
I’m fairly certain I’ve never met a dessert I didn’t love. I don’t qualify jello as dessert. It’s a side dish. Even if it’s my Grandma’s Cream Cheese Jello, which is more of a dessert. But given that you hate jello and cheesecake, you would not like Cream Cheese Jello. We can still be friends.
Ha. My grandma used to put shredded carrots in pineapple jello. I almost miss that but mostly I miss her.
Never liked Jello…always convinced it was from an alien planet. As for tiramisu, I once ordered it and got a long, black hair…and have never ordered it since.
Ewww. Not so nice. Maybe it would have improved the texture of tiramisu, though…
I’m with Marlene . . . anything with coconut. Blech.
My hubs is always the fun playmate that tries to make everything he does with the kids “fun.” He makes dinner for them once a week so I can escape, um I mean, go to a class. You would think it was a circus. The other 6 days of the week that MOM makes dinner? It’s like armageddon.
Circus vs. Armageddon. The dinner showdown. Sounds like a reality show. The reality is parenting, I guess.
I don’t care for cheesecake either, and since a bone marrow transplant, all chocolate tastes like rotten eggs to me, so chocolate is out. Very challenging for a dessert lover like me. I’m a caramel girl. All the way!
You’ve had a bone marrow transplant? And it changed your tastes? Wow. You have many stories to tell.
And caramel is lovely.
Not only is that hilarious, but you are so good at hooking the reader with your first lines. Baileys yum!
Thanks, Catherine!
Cake pops. I don’t know if they’re considered a dessert or one of those fancy “only eat with coffee” bourgeois kind of things.. but I hate cake pops. So much sugar. Such little sustenance.
And more jello thigh guilt.
I’ve never actually had one. They’re kind of the Martha Stewarts of desserts, setting woman back 40 years by spending a kazillion hours more than they need to in the kitchen just to make something sweet and “pretty.”
Oops. I stepped on a soap box there.
I can’t stand cheesecake! It smells funny to me. Also Apple pie..why would you eat apple pie when you could have cherry?
However I must admit I love jiggly jello greatness.
Apple pie I can eat, but I’d far sooner eat apple crisp. Warm. Yum.
Love it!
Thanks, J!
I love lemon…. real unadulterated nature’s lemon. Any way .
Is there any lemon in India? Miss you here. I will actually suck on a lemon wedge. But the jiggly pie from a can? Not so sure that counts. Namaste!
I do wonder if we can be friends. No cheesecake?!?
It’s just wrong! WRONG!
If it’s any consolation, I despise tiramisu more than cheesecake. You can have my portion of both of them however. But I’ll fight you for the brownie.
I don’t think a dessert exists, that I despise… However I HATE making school lunches. Hate…. Capital “H” and all!!!
It is a chore that reminds me of Sisyphus.
Proof than men never grow up! They need mothers, not wives. Now running before your hubbs catches me in a rugby tackle. Oh, pass the Baileys.
I think he’d be off side. Or there’d be a knock on. By the way, guess what hubby is doing right now….watching Rugby 7s from Las Vegas….
LOL – good to see he is keeping his interest up!
Adopted mutts…very funny. Reminds me of that scene in “A Christmas Story” – How do the piggies eat? That’s right! Oink, oink. Hope you didn’t enjoy your Bailey’s so much that you left in the lunches instead of the PB&J.
No peanut products in the lunches, no Baileys in the house. Sigh. But we all survived. Kind of.
everything you wrote was excellence, but I couldn’t get over the first sentence.
You ever drink Baileys from a shoe?
[ala YouTube video: Old Gregg]
Thanks for the memories.
I love the “but.” And now…thanks to you and Youtube, I get the reference!
Here’s the link: (first reference is at 0:58)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eIInySnQe4I
I have a hard time eating jello or 7-up/Sprite without thinking i’m dying of something (it was my mother’s sick meal of choice). I hate (as in despise) pumpkin anything (pies, cookies), spice cake, and carrot cake. It’s a waste of flour and sugar, imo. Oh, and I HATE (as in destest) cooked raisins — I think people that ruin oatmeal cookies with raisins should be put in prison. And why is it that no one makes oatmeal chocolate chip cookies?
What I love is Tiramisu (I’ll eat your share), peach pie and kahlua pie.
Hmm. I’ve never had peach pie or kahlua pie. Can you drink the latter with a straw?
And I LOVE oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. It’s the only way to make them chewy and delicious.
I’m so-so on jello, unless I have the flu….do not like tiramasu, wishy-washy about cannoli, but like cheesecake. Kind of like lemon meringue pie. Almost anything chocolate, even with coconut, but there is one dessert I hate, even though it is chocolate. My mom used to make it when we were kids. It was called a pudding, but it was more like chocolate cakey stuff with sauce. Never enjoyed it. But caramel….yum. Bailey’s……double yum. Have you tried caramel Bailey’s? Mmmm.
Caramel Baileys? That does sound yum. Off to window shop at liquor stores. Or not.
Oh and Paige…..I make oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I like them but the kids always complain. Why can’t you leave the oatmeal out and just make the chocolate chip ones?
My kids love oatmeal chocolate chip cookies, but my neigbour’s kids don’t like them.
I don’t wonder a bit if we can be friends. Haters of Tiramisu should unite, as should women who have a sense of humor about their families. Nice work. I’m laughing my ass off. Me, I hate and despise anything with coffee in it. Yeah, I know. I’m on my own here.
Actually, Marion, we could definitely be friends. I hate mocha everything and don’t drink coffee ever. I do love tea, though, and caffeine in that form is an important part of my day. And week. And life.
I’m with you on the Tiramisu – it is just wrong. When I was in elementary school I had an aversion to chocolate pudding and chocolate milk. When they set out my little plastic lunch package at my assigned seat in the cafeteria, my spot had regular milk and applesauce on chocolate days. I’m not sure if I should be disturbed that I ate lunch in an assigned seat in an elementary school lunch room in which we weren’t allowed to talk (true story), or impressed that the lunch ladies actually catered to my picky eating habits.
KB! How are you? How’s the transition?
But you weren’t allowed to talk during lunch? I can just imagine the sounds of children chewing…
The transition is wonderful, painful, beautiful, stressful, time-consuming, all-consuming but amazing. I will be writing soon, I promise. 🙂
Re: not talking at lunch… it was draconian. And I remember clearly once being held in from recess because I dared to chatter during my brief release from the classroom. So wrong!
Glad you’re well. Can’t wait to live vicariously through your stories!
Jello jigglers will never be the same, thanks for the laughs today! Leigh
Jello jigglers…yes…off to google “boot camp for jello thighs…”
I’m glad to read that Fun Daddy and Get Sh*t Done Mommy don’t just live in our house 🙂
Yup. My nickname is Rain.
On everyone’s parade.
Meringue is my poison dessert. And in a similar vein macarons (as opposed to macaroons, which I have never tried). I never really understood why would anyone eat what is essentially confectioner’s sugar held together by egg white (and some almond meal in the case of macarons). I suppose from a health point of view jello ought to be on my hate list as well but I’m embarassed to say I actually like the texture and taste of these alien-like substances, or at least I liked them 20 years ago, which was probably the last time I ate them.
You just made me think of pavlova, a dessert I love! Yum…
I just realized that there is no food I don’t like.
Crap.
(Better get the Baileys.)
When it comes to desserts, I’m not big on Tiramisu, Jell-O, trifle, whipped cream or anything that can be described as “light”. Dessert should be dense and filling. Dessert should eat like an entree. Double chocolate brownies will do just fine!