Keeping an Ion...

Some people wear their true love's photo in a locket around their neck.  I think it would be more honest if I wore this necklace by raven of Molecular Muse - it's the molecule for chocolate.

 

Speaking of chocolate (and when are we not?) In Praise of Sardines' Brett Emerson explains step by step how you can actually whip chocolate - the way one whips cream to make whipping cream or butter.  Chocolate has enough fat in it that it can literally be whipped into fluffy mounds.  All by itself, nothing added. Discovered by those crafty Molecular Gastronomers. That's gotta be good.  If that whets your appetite, Think Geek has a Molecular Gastronomy starter kit - just looking at the cola caviar makes my mouth salivate, I can just imagine that burst of flavour.  I envision them being like little, juicy mandarin orange beads - I hope they're not corn starch globs. How disappointing that would be! Go here for a recap of My Last Bite's fruit caviar adventure, which seemed to turn out much more fun and promising than Julie's Kitchen.

When you're done with your culinary amazingness, It would be very apropos to display it all in a nice Bucky Bowl, named in honour of Buckminister Fuller,  inventor/discoverer of the geodesic dome and buckey balls.

Eggstravaganza!

I love the simplicity of these urban alphabet mugs.  Too bad so many names in our family start with the same letter!  Oh why didn't I name my children Viceroy, Xavier, Ulysses, and Zuzu?!   People need to start making alphabet mugs with more than one picture option..... like "A" with an ant, "A" with an apple, "A" with an anvil... that way we can all have our own hot chocolate mugs and not get them all mixed up with each other.

These delicate hand carved eggs take my breath away.I so want to reach out and push a piece out of the puzzle egg.

source

The eggs on the left look victorian but the ones on the right are an actual victorian-era wild egg collection.  Totally Master and Commander.

I knew the White House had an Easter egg hunt every year  (which I think is an absolutely happy tradition which makes me proud to live in this country, for real) but I had no idea they made special souvenir eggs. I don't know why I didn't, it seems obvious now. I wish somebody had a gallery of every one ever made.  It was actually hard to find these ones - I got them off of Ebay!  Lots of them are signed by presidents on the back.  I'm not a collector, (except of movie tickets and beach glass), but if I were this would be a cool thing to show grandbabies.


















Look at the following closely. How do people even think ofstuff like this?!

source 

Notice the elaborate Ukrainian eggs (pysanky).  My grandma made beautiful ones and had them hanging in her kitchen window at Easter.  I have lovely memories of watching the light shining through the thin hand blown shells while she deftly cooked breakfast while murmuring the rosary, pouring orange juice in small white bumpy glasses and handing out translucent cod liver oil pills.  Life at grandma's was exotic.  I made pysanky once, but now the only Easter eggs I create are in my post titles.

Death By Chocolate

The Chocolate S'mores Keyboard hijacked my brain, now my mind keeps drifting to Chocolate Thoughts.

By Naoko Tone and Atsuyoshi Iijima. Hisashi Hidano`s “c.red “412-810″ by HIMAA{images found swissmiss.typepad.com}

We had chickens when I was a kid, and soon we were overrun with eggs. Tired of scrambled and hard boiled eggs, my mom and dad looked for recipes that would use a lot of eggs. In an old Betty Crocker cookbook they found the recipe for Chocolate Chiffon Cake with Brown Beauty Icing. It used a glorious 7-10 eggs! Still absolutely the best American icing recipe ever. No sickening powdered sugar sweetness. It tastes like chocolate truffles. And the light chiffon cake is the perfect counterpoint. My family had this for dessert for about eleven months straight. I'm not joking. It was heaven.

When I got married and began hosting my own dinner parties, I soon learned that while planning the party I would have giddy excitement and elaborate plans to make a seventeen step Double Chocolate Truffle Sacherorte with Blackberry Coulis Reduction, or some such, for dessert. But the gritty reality was that day of the party I didn't even have time or energy to make Rice Krispies. So Peg Bracken's Pots de Chocolat recipe from her Appendix to the I Hate Cooking cookbook became my never-fail-to-please standby. It's rich. It melts in your mouth. Its simple presentation always evokes oohs and ahhs. And it takes about five minutes to make. Tops. There is a god.

I now welcome all chocolate ramblings, recipes, and recomendations. I'm sure I will also be adding more... and more... and more to this topic.

If Only