(Someone actually looked at my post yesterday! That person was interested in chocolate, so here’s another one, but not a recipe this time.)
I’m sure there are wonderful chocolate shops/businesses all over the world, but I love this one: www.normanloveconfections.com I’ve been to the shop and the picture above is what I enjoyed. The chocolates are amazing!
(Comes with a WARNING: This recipe is for one big serving of approx. 850 calories! Share!)
This icy chocolate has a ganache-like texture, made with dark chocolate, hot chocolate mix, milk and a little sugar. The mixture is whirled in a blender with ice and more milk, if needed, until it’s the consistency of a frozen margarita. Top with whipped cream and chocolate shavings.
| 6 1/2 ounces | Your favorite dark chocolate, such as Valhrona (72 percent) chocolate or Dove Dark chocolate |
| 2 teaspoons | Store-bought hot chocolate mix |
| 1 1/2 tablespoons | Sugar |
| 1 1/2 cups | Whole milk, divided use |
| 3 cups | Ice cubes |
| Garnish: Whipped cream | |
| Garnish: Shaved chocolate |
2.In blender, place 1 cup milk, cooled chocolate mixture and ice. Blend on high speed until icy consistency of a frozen daiquiri is reached. Pour into big goblets and top with generous dollop of whipped cream and shaved chocolate.
Poetry Fans
We’re of a certain age,
when time grows hot, then cold.
Where discretion tints experience
and wisdom could unfold.
We seek the worded breeze,
accounts that move the air.
From windy musings we conjure dreams
and share them if we dare.
We seek the weft and warp,
designs, the patterns clashing.
We plumb the mysteries of life and
fantasize while flashing
Garden Editing
You place yourself in beauty
but your essence holds no charm.
You have no scent to tease my nose,
no bloom or fruit to please.
You, plant without guile,
are a weed.
I love writing letters and getting mail. I suspect everyone loves letters, but I have two special reasons, my Great Grandmothers, one on my father’s side and one on my mother’s.
When I was a little girl, occasionally I visited my father’s grandmother in the company of one or two of her younger daughters. Grandmother had diabetes and was house-bound (as we said then) with “foot trouble”. For many years, Grandmother lived with her oldest daughter, Inez, and Inez’s husband. I always thought Inez was beautiful and regal-looking with her coronet of soft, gray hair braided around the top of her head. Grandmother was as fastidious about her appearance as her daughter. I remember her face was deeply wrinkled and her nose had grown hawk-like with her advanced years. Grandmother’s hair was always neat and restrained in a bun. She smelled of Nozema skin cream and a perfume I can’t identify. Although she was mostly confined to her bed or the chair in her room due to her inability to walk more than a few steps, she always wore a crisp cotton dress, sometimes with a shawl, in case visitors dropped by.
Television hadn’t advanced to their home, but I remember Aunt Inez’s foot-pump organ that I was actually allowed to try. They listened to the radio. The newspaper was very important to everyone in the household and Grandmother read it thoroughly. She had a special mission. Every Sunday afternoon she cut two cartoons from the newspaper and, along with a stick of Juicy Fruit gum, enclosed them in envelopes for my brother and me. She sent a letter to us every week from as far back as I can remember until she died. How I loved her!
The other grandmother was my mother’s, on her father’s side. She visited us even though her son (my grandfather) and my grandmother were divorced. I think of her as my “Summer Grandma” because she visited us while we were out of school. She had given up her own home and spent the year traveling between her children and their families. She sang songs to me and my siblings…songs from before 1900! She did the “finger work” on the dresses my mother made for me, getting ready for school each year. Grandma’s stitches were perfect, with exact spacing and tension.
I can see Grandma now: a tiny woman with the slightly stooped posture. She often wore simple, dark dresses with maybe a bit of lace at the collar, a flat black hat on her gray head and sensible shoes. She knew herbs and plants…cures…. and I remember walking with her as she absently stroked the plants near the sidewalk, as if she was patting the hand of a friend. Sometimes our walks took us to town when she wanted to shop for the handkerchiefs and bandanas she placed in letters to relatives on their birthdays. She had a huge correspondence. It seemed hardly a day passed when our mailbox wasn’t filled with letters coming to her or a stack of them going out. She always wrote on a lined pad and, with her writing, kept the entire family caught up on news. She lived until she was 93, I believe. For a short while, we were five generations, and we all still miss her.
I used to write a lot of letters and notes to relatives and friends. I slowed down quite a bit when I broke my wrist and some of those little bones in my hand. My handwriting was never flawless but, believe me, it’s not great now. Writing on the computer is much more legible. Still, I miss my fountain pens! Thanks to DH, I have a new one that is wonderful, but it hasn’t worked a miracle on my penmanship.
If you are interested in letterwriting, here’s a site that has some wonderful links
http://www.wendy.com/letterwriting/
And here’s a poem:
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There’s bound to be a word for my condition: I buy books when I already have many unread books awaiting my attention. I already feel a bit guilty about the ones languishing in a tall stack beside my bed. However, that doesn’t stop me when I find a title I want, especially if it’s at a good price. An apparently insignificant frisson of remorse only sets in when I place yet another book on my to-be-read collection.
Right now Jane Austen’s letters wait, as does advice from Cesar Milan. The Rag and Bone Shop of the Heart’s poetic turn is still unlocked. Sumi-e and manga are willing to share their techniques if I only take the time. Creative bookbinding has been waiting for almost a year!
Years ago I managed to read a book or two a week while working for a charity, keeping the house relatively tidy and raising a son. How did I do it? Now, if I have a moment for bedtime reading, I tend to fall asleep.
I’ll admit I’m having a little trouble wading my way through Love in the Time of Cholera. I can only hope reading it will not take the hundred years (or so it seemed) I needed to read One Hundred Years of Solitude. Forgive me, fans of those book. My friend Barbara is having her own struggle with Proust’s Remembrance of Things Past. We commiserate, then we laugh.
One Saturday night, about dusk, DH and I were enjoying fast-food hamburgers while parked by the river. Of course, I noticed the birds…seagulls, crows, doves, pigeons. Most of the pigeons were dark colored, but one was white. The others appeared to shun it. The white pigeon continued looking for food in the sparse grass, even when the dark pigeons flew away to roost for the night on the roof of a building. I decided to test if the bird was hungry. Since the seagulls swooped on everything, I was cautious. I slowly got out and stood by the car. Casually, I dropped crumbs from my hamburger bun. I kept myself between the bread and the seagulls. With the windfall of crumbs, the pigeon shored up his courage and came toward me. I stepped back into the car as the pigeon ate. I placed a crumb on the window ledge. The pigeon jumped up. Poor thing must have been starving! I knew, if I could lure the pigeon into the car, I could catch it. I put lots of bread on the dash. It was irresistible to the bird! In a matter of seconds, I had the bird caught (with hardly a flutter) and tucked into my jacket. I told DH, “We have to go home now.” He had “that look” on his face, but he knows me well. I released the pigeon, who appeared healthy, into our flight. He’s very tame, friendly. I know he must have been handled by a person before because wild birds just aren’t that calm or easy to catch. He has no leg-band and, in the months we’ve had him, there have been no adverts for missing pigeons. Mine now, I guess. We haven’t named him, but I call him various terms of endearment.
Recently son C. and I took advantage of a free birthday lunch at a local restaurant which, to keep me out of trouble, will be nameless. If C. bought lunch there, mine would be free. Our servers, in their late teens, were having such a good time laughing at their own gossip, we amused ourselves by listening as we waited. C. ordered a panini and I a hamburger. The menu didn’t mention blackening of the burger, so I assume what happened to mine was unintentional. C.’s panini was also charred on the bottom. When our waitress asked us, since I was entitled to a free birthday dessert, if I’d like “some of that black cake”, I couldn’t answer for a second. Seems she meant “you know, regular chocolate cake”. We think the restaurant should be renamed “Burnt Offerings”.
