"jell-o" news and stories

It was almost a year ago that we were first introduced to the concept of scented packaging for food products, but ever since our first whiff, the idea has really taken off and the idea has hit the mainstream.

Scents are a way of setting a particular product or advertisement apart from the competition, forcing people to take notice before turning to something else. Just look at the bus station ad for the Milk Board, which was an extreme example, but clearly generated a lot of attention. In a crowded marketplace, this type of unavoidable advertising is just what some companies need.

Recent products to jump on the scented ad bandwagon include Kraft Jell-O and White Fudge Chips Ahoy, which got full-page scratch and sniff ads in People Magazine and Diet Pepsi Jazz, which has scented coupons and "store signs infused with the new soft drink's [fragrance]." LG even used chocolate-scents to market their new Chocolate phones, although it probably triggered a chocolate craving before one for mobile phones.

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One of the reasons that Jello is on the list of the best desserts for the 4th of July is not only that it is very popular, perhaps simply due to tradition, but that it is pretty. It comes in bright, clear reds and blues and, for a holiday that is color-heavy, the lure of their look is hard to resist. I should know. I was lured by the look of the Patriotic Jello Pie, despite the fact that I haven't eaten blue jello or Cool Whip in years.

The jello website has a video tutorial for making the pie, so I watched it, went to the store to pick up the necessary ingredients, and set to work on the pie.

Those of you that are familiar with the Jell-O experiments of MyScienceProject.org will be glad to know that a new batch of tests was added this month. Apparently the folks at MyScienceProject got lots of responses from their previous attempts to pack as much booze into a Jell-O shot as possible. On the new page, they're testing the benefits of using unflavored gelatin (yum), blooming it first, and then cutting it with grain alcohol or Bacardi 151 instead of vodka. After producing plenty of barely palatable Jell-O shots, the only logical thing to do was set them on fire. It's a shame there wasn't a buffet nearby.

As a side note, NPR recently featured a story about wine-infused gelatin.

[Photo: MyScienceProject.org]

I recently returned from a four day trip to Utah. My man, Matt, the children and I travel there about four times a year to visit the in-laws. Most of Matt's relatives are Mormon and they embrace just about everything that goes with that status.

Having grown up as a Catholic, these sojourns are always a fascinating cultural study for me. One of my favorite aspects of these studies involves food. Somebody is always cooking at a Mormon get together. There are always zillions of aunts, uncles, cousins and crawling babies and ordering out for pizza will just not suffice. Every function I have attended involves salads, both leafy and Jell-O,  white rolls, casseroles, meats, sauces, plenty of fruit juice and an array of desserts. In the past the kitchens have always intimidated me and I have stuck closely to the buffet line.  However, since I am now deeply entrenched in food research I decided to ask the various women, not be sexist but I have found the kitchens to contain only women at these gatherings, about their cooking secrets. I did not divulge to them that I would be blabbing their tips to the blogosphere, but I believe their knowledge just might benefit one or two readers. Following, in no particular order, are a few of the tidbits I learned this past weekend:

Some of you may recall a post last Fall about Liz Hickok's Jell-O renderings of San Francisco. Well, someone has to say it: there's always room for more. To commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1906 San Francisco earthquake, Hickok has replicated the Twin Peaks neighborhood in a topographically correct, jiggleable model. The quivering cityscape was recently on display at San Francisco's Exploratorium science museum. It will return again on April 1 as part of a larger earthquake exhibit.

[Thanks to Joe for the tip]
[Photo NYT]

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