{"id":51933,"date":"2014-09-16T00:09:57","date_gmt":"2014-09-16T07:09:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/?p=51933"},"modified":"2014-09-16T00:09:57","modified_gmt":"2014-09-16T07:09:57","slug":"to-gel-or-not-to-gel","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/51933","title":{"rendered":"To gel or not to gel?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tBefore we knew about the unsavory animal origins of traditional gelatin (a gelling agent made from\u00a0boiling the skin, tendons, ligaments, bones, and even hooves\u00a0of cows, pigs, or horses), we might have picked up a box of Safeway’s “Jell-well” gelatin dessert.<\/p>\n

\"jell-well\"<\/p>\n

Savvy shoppers now choose to use my innovative ChillOver Powder<\/a>\u2014it’s vegan, but ends up\u00a0like gelatin, sets up in half the time gelatin does, seals in flavors more quickly, and doesn\u2019t melt at room temperature. (It’s fantastic for making jams, far superior to pectin, etc.)<\/p>\n

But being a Utah native, where residents eat twice as much gelatin as anyone else on the planet and a\u00a0staple of every community potluck was “gelatin salad”\u2014a concoction of lime gelatin with\u00a0grated carrots and celery trapped inside, topped with Miracle Whip\u2014I’m genetically inclined to wax nostalgic about all things gelatin.<\/p>\n

Like my propensity for collecting vintage gelatin molds:<\/p>\n

\"molds\"<\/p>\n

… and decorating with them:<\/p>\n

\"lily-7_1297\"<\/a>\"lily-6_1296\"<\/a>And, if you have any idea of how hard it is to choose and trademark a product name (I was once told I couldn’t use my own name on my magazine because\u00a0of Mary Jane candies (read more about them here<\/a>)\u00a0and Mary Jane and Friends bread, a southern grocery-store brand), you’ll know I was amused to learn this bit of trademark history:<\/p>\n

In 1927, when Jell-well tried to stop Jell-X-Cell from using that name as a\u00a0trademark, they were overruled by provisions of the “Trade-Mark Act,” which forbade registration of words or devices “which are descriptive of the goods with which they are used, or of the character or the quality of such goods.” In the case, the judge ruled that “One of the prime objects and indispensable qualities of the substance is that, when it is changed by manipulation and the addition of water into a form available for use as an edible substance, it must ‘jell.’ To my mind, the words are so plainly descriptive of a natural and necessary quality of the concoction as to relieve the question of any doubt whatsoever.” He went on to say, “With the whole field of possible coinage before them, it is strange that merchants insist upon adopting marks that are so nearly descriptive.”<\/p>\n

I was finally able to trademark MaryJanesFarm<\/em> by\u00a0removing the apostrophe and smooshing it all together in one word, thereby stylizing it and making it a recognizable logo instead of\u00a0merely a name.\u00a0(Important life lesson: If you’re persistent and imaginative, there are usually ways around the “rules.” It helps to be a Taurus\u2014we’re known for our persistence, sometimes called “stubbornness.”)<\/p>\n

If you’re gaga for the good old days of gelatin schmaltz too, how about this retro kitsch t-shirt from Zazzle.com<\/a>?<\/p>\n

\"jell-well-t-shirt\"<\/p>\n

Or this morsel of Utah lore:
\nUtah residents like gelatin so much that when Utah hosted the\u00a02002 Winter Olympics in Salt Lake City, one of the official pins was a green gelatin jiggler in the shape of the state.<\/p>\n

Or this fun\u00a0appearance of gelatin in the movies:
\nIn the 1959 movie, Some Like It Hot<\/em>, Jerry, played by Jack Lemon, says with awe when watching Sugar Kane Kowalczyk, played by Marilyn Monroe, “Will you look at that! Look how she moves! It’s like Jell-O on springs. Must have some sort of built-in motor or something.”<\/p>\n

Comment below with your favorite gelatin anecdotes … and tell me how you like my non-gelatin ChillOver Powder<\/a>!\t\t<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before we knew about the unsavory animal origins of traditional gelatin (a gelling agent made from\u00a0boiling the skin, tendons, ligaments, bones, and even hooves\u00a0of cows, pigs, or horses), we might have picked up a box of Safeway’s “Jell-well” gelatin dessert. … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-51933","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gift_for_gab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51933","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=51933"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/51933\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=51933"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=51933"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.raisingjane.org\/journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=51933"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}