Two good jelly-related things

1. Vege-Gel from SuperCook. I love jelly, but gelatine is a fairly gross thing even if you are not a vegetarian. For me, it falls into the area occupied also by wine (when I am not Living Healthily, obviously), interesting crisps, instant noodles and parmesan cheese -- stuff which doesn't look like it has any meat in it but actually contains bits of stomach, bone, bladder etc heavily disguised.

We all live by wavy lines, and mine wiggle quite a bit in this area. I look at the label if I am buying myself, but I don't think about it if I am eating out or someone else is cooking or shopping. And with gelatine, there's also the issue of Evening Primrose Oil, which I swear keeps me sane, but the gelatine-free capsules are so tiny I would need to take thousands of them. So I don't think about it, and I swallow.

But back to the point. I can't bring myself to make jelly, even though I love it, because that is so obviously eating gelatine for gelatine's sake, and that is Bad. And then I discovered Vege-Gel. Make it with a litre of freshly squeezed orange juice plus raspberries and elderflower cordial, and you have a sublime triumph of a dessert that looks like a huge, shimmering breast and has harmed no animal in the making. What more could you ask?

2. Lost Horizons by Lemon Jelly. This kind of music is called downtempo, I found out today. I had always thought of it as chill-out but I must be showing my age because I don't even know my genres on the stuff I *like*. Anyway, it's groovy, it's funny, it's clever and it's very English, which I like very much as I assumed you had to live in France or Manhattan to get this vibe right. And it's hard to truly love an album when you know you are not nearly, remotely, hope in hell as cool as the young men in smooth trainers and twisted denim who recorded it.

Also their website is at www.lemonjelly.ky, which made me laugh. The site itself is a bit irritating, although they have had the sense to do a HTML version for grumpy old-fashioned Flash haters like me, so they get points for that.

joella