Good idea

So here's my good idea for the month.

We own a set of glasses that are technically for sekt, which is the appellation for champagne in Germany, where the glasses came from.  They're great for sekt, champagne, ginger ale -- and parfaits.  Except for the part about getting the parfaits into the glasses.

Every time I've made parfaits in these glasses, over the course of decades, I've spent as much time trying to clean the inside of the glass above the food level as I did actually assembling the dessert.  I just can't get ice cream or other semi-solid materials into a skinny little glass without them brushing against the top on the way down.

But my good idea was to make a collar of wax paper to protect the inside of the glass before filling it with ice cream and fruit.

There are still a couple of bugs to be worked out of this plan.  The trick, I learned, is to make the inside depth of the collar only a bit shorter than the space left above your contents. 

If the collar doesn't extend far enough down, you still risk bumping the food against the inside of the glass.  If it extends below food level, you'll have a bit drawn up onto the clean glass when you take the collar out -- as in the photo below.

Still, it took only a second with a damp paper towel to clean off the inside of the glass.  And the glasses where I accidentally got the collars exactly right were perfect.  I'll use this method again, only measuring the paper more carefully.