Foodstuff Friday: confetti v. Jigglers & Dana Gioia

Jigglers are among my all-time favorite foods which I don't eat. Have I even been in proximity to a Jiggler or a Jiggler to me in many years? Recent memory is jello-&-Jiggler-free, yet olde Jiggler memories are happy ones.


Jigglers are one of the prettiest, shiniest two-ingredient foodstuffs around, requiring two boxes of jello and 2-1/2 cups boiling water. The sole cooking accoutrement is a 13x9-inch pan, and when the jello is firmly set, as if it were your father's mind after he said, "No, and that's final," it gets poured, probably by you, into said pan.


If you want more than one color of Jiggler, do it all over again.  Then the cookie cutters.  Look at the photo. Aren't you feeling happy?


While larger than confetti by a bunch, Jiggers and confetti are neck-in-neck in the happy pretty category. Differences are, however, notable. Confetti isn't edible and has no place in Foodstuff Friday.  (Sue me.) If Jigglers are thrown about at the stroke of midnight and left on the floor or Times Square, they will be lots less Jiggly in the morning, while confetti will retain at least of of its confetti-ness, granted same will be considerably sullied.


Cookin' up a batch a Jigglers might be a bit much for tonight's celebration and so we here at Foodstuff Friday, me, my staff (me), suggest you serve your Jigglers tomorrow and throw your confetti tonight.


Addendum: You know. As I was writing this I kept thinking, Who is the genius to invent Jigglers. So I googled. A poet! A poet was part of the team to invent, create, Jigglers. Dana Gioia, when he was at General Foods. He rather famously left the corporate world, headed the NEA, wrote Can Poetry Matter--the title essay was published in Harper's and provided conversational fodder for a while--and books of poetry.


So just when I think I'm off-campus it turns out I'm at the blackboard. Here's a poem by Gioia, published in Poetry 2010. If he wrote a poem about Jigglers, please tell me.

The Present

The present that you gave me months ago

is still unopened by our bed,

sealed in its rich blue paper and bright bow.

I’ve even left the card unread

and kept the ribbon knotted tight.

Why needlessly unfold and bring to light

the elegant contrivances that hide

the costly secret waiting still inside?

___________

Dana Gioia, Poetry, September 2010