I’ve only made these once, and every time I see this photo, I’m reminded of Covid lockdowns. These red, white and blue jelly shots were a novelty treat, enjoyed in September, 2021, to mark a football match. Our city was in lockdown, and so the game was being played in another state. Both teams’ colours were red, white and blue.
I know our American friends make stuff like this all the time, because that’s who I stole the idea from. Love you, guys xxx. I can’t find the exact recipe, but this is pretty close. Honestly, I can’t remember whether I used milk or condensed milk, but condensed milk sounds delicious. With hindsight, I truly wish I’d put the vodka in 😆.
About a year after the jelly shots, which I will make again one day, this time with vodka, I wrote this poem.
Zoom
it seems like light years ago
we lived only on our screens
sunsets and potato-head filters and memes
to brighten the day, weather reports
and news interrupted by children
crying and making faces for attention
in the background of zoom meetings
and zoom lectures and zoom catch-ups
zoom court cases and zoom confessions
spying snippets of bedrooms and bathrooms
private collections and introspections
the tails of cats walking on by
and movie stars sharing champagne
would-be stars sharing a tune
and it all happened on zoom
zoom, the opposite of travelling quickly
zoom, the opposite of a true close-up
zoom, the opposite of a four-walled room
and each of us trying all at once to reach
through our camera cocoon for connection
©elsp2024
The jelly shots also remind me of the time I made jelly syringes for a Halloween party when my daughter was a baby-teen. Again, a novelty treat borrowed from Americans (both Halloween and the syringes, how’s our cultural differences, hey what?). The syringes were very popular (NO VODKA). Innocent times 😀.
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