I bet you’ve been sitting home thinking “Wait a minute…wasn’t the Bad Mommy cooking around the country or something? Whatever happened to that?” I’m sorry…we’ve been on hiatus with not only our state tour, but cooking as well. Life has just gotten in the way a lot lately, but rest assured, we’re planning to pick it up for the next couple weeks. Yes, I hear you all letting out a collective sigh of relief. I mean, how are you even functioning without knowing what state food we’re cooking this week???

This week’s state is Utah. Yeah. I googled Utah’s state foods and apparently the poor souls who live in Utah are seriously missing out on life. Sure, it’s breathtakingly beautiful there, but the only foods Utah is known for are either Jello or condiments. I’m serious. Google it. Their top foods include honey and fry dip. They might be vegetarians too because I saw no mention of any meat products whatsoever. I’m very sad for them. Food is life, you know?

Anyway, I decided to make the Jello. I mean, it’s would be almost impossible for me to mess this up, right? After all, I don’t even need to use that evil oven of mine. The only way I could screw this up would be if I truly was The Worst Cook Ever.

Guess what? I’m The Worst Cook Ever. Well, sort of. How can you screw up Jello, is what you’re screaming at your phone, aren’t you? You didn’t even have to actually COOK anything!!!!

Okay, in all fairness, I may have been so enthused about a simple recipe that I failed in the most basic of ways. How? Read on. I decided that I really don’t care for Jello in its purest form, so I made Jello jigglers for the kids and Jello shots for the adults. I knew Jello shots had a different liquid to mix ratio because I’ve made them before, so I googled how to make them and prepped them without a problem: For the jigglers, I did realize that I would have to use LESS water than you would use for normal Jello. I googled THAT recipe and the Kraft Jello Jigglers recipe was loading onto my phone when my daughter pointed out that the recipe was on the side of the box. THIS is where I made my fatal mistake.

Had I just continued on to the Kraft site, none of this would have happened. Have you ever tried to read the side of a Jello box before? The writing is in like 6 point font. My eyes are too old for that crap. So I squinted as I followed the directions (I thought). Turns out I missed a crucial detail. I boiled the water: I added the boiling water to the Jello mix: I poured it into my square baker: Anyone notice all my Pampered Chef products? (Look how clean that scraper came, even after having all that red dye number 40 on it!) Maybe Pampered Chef should sponsor me. I give them a ton of free advertising on my blog…and sometimes I even cook well with those products. At least hubby does…

So I chilled the shots and the jigglers for well over four hours. The shots came out great. Although, I would highly recommend plastic shot cups so you can squeeze the shot into your mouth—this was a last minute thing so I had to work with what I had on hand.

The jigglers, not so much. You see, the 6 point font had blurred my vision and I didn’t realize I was supposed to use TWO boxes of jello instead of one. Which, if you think about it, is kind of ridiculous because the directions are on a SINGLE box. But whatever. Maybe I need reading glasses. At any rate, what we got was just plain Jello—which apparently isn’t meant to be eaten with your fingers:

Okay…so maybe I’ll make an eye doctor appointment for next week…so I don’t disappoint my kids for the next state’s recipes.