Culinary arts

When That was around 4 or 5 years old, my brother Dave and his wife Janice played and insidious practical joke on us. We didn't know it at the time, but they got us good. They bought our son a kid cookbook. On the surface, it would seem that my chef brother had good intentions. It was a cute cookbook with cartoons of bears and dogs cooking all kinds of seemingly wonderful food. What happened next was no less than a full frontal assault on our sensibilities.

My sweet son soon asked to cook dinner for us. I dutifully gathered the ingredients to such classics like tuna casserole topped with potato chips, mini english muffin pizzas, tuna melts, and so on. See, that list of food doesn't sound bad at all, does it? And yet, in the barely capable hands of my pre-school aged son, it was all bad. Really bad. At dinner times, Hubby and I would tuck in to our meals all smiles and eating with great enthusiasm for the boy's efforts. All the while, spelling out our true evaluations of the meal. Our son didn't know how to read yet.

"Wow, this is so good, son. Great job. I think this is I-N-E-D-I-B-L-E."

"I agree, Honey, really great job. I think I'm going to have another serving and maybe P-U-K-E."

"Mmmm, me too."

And so on. But the upside of us braving those early scary meals is that our son is creative in the kitchen and still comes up with interesting concoctions. He's moved on to desserts.

I wish I had a picture to show you, but I think it would look a little rude. You'll just have to imagine it yourself. The look of it is likely quite familiar to you.

Our son decided to experiment with Jello brand products -- the two major categories of which are pudding and gelatin. Unfortunately, all we had in our pantry was chocolate pudding and lemon jello. Still sounds perfectly sane, right? It isn't. So here is my son's recipe:

1 six oz. package of chocolate pudding
Milk
1 six oz. package of lemon jello
Hot & Cold water

1. Prepare chocolate pudding according to package instructions. Pour into 5 squat highball glasses, preferably clear glass. Don't worry if slides down the sides of the glass. This actually enhances the final effect.

2. Prepare lemon jello according to package instructions. Pour over the chocolate pudding, taking care not to disturb the pudding much, you don't want the jello to dissolve the chocolate pudding.

3. Cover each glass with plastic wrap. Refrigerate for several hours. Serve.


You will learn that jello doesn't firm up well with the chocolate pudding inside of it. We didn't know if this was because of the milk in it or if the dessert itself knew that it was going to be a disaster. So imagine the lemon jello is still liquid when served. The chocolate pudding, semi solid. See where this is going?

My sweet husband called me to the refrigerator while these desserts were convalescing. He told me to brace myself and then take a peek inside. What I saw when I opened the refrigerator reminded me greatly of my last bout of the stomach flu. Or maybe the day after overindulgence at an all you can eat buffet. Sorry to be gross. But we still refer to that dessert as diarrhea surprise.

It tastes okay if you keep your eyes closed.