Oh, chocolate. We love you, chocolate. We love you when we are PMS, we love you at weddings, we love you during parties. And this week, we loved you during women’s group on Wednesday.

My Wacky Friend got this from America’s Test Kitchen, and I got it from her, for you. She says: “It kind of looks complicated, but it was really easy and my son helped me quite a bit, so I recommend it as a ‘Martha Stewart’ activity with the kiddos!”

Flourless Chocolate Cake

8 large eggs, cold
1 pound bittersweet or semi-sweet chocolate, coarsely chopped
½ pound unsalted butter (2 sticks), cut into ½-inch chunks
¼ C strong coffee* or coffee liqueur (optional)
Confectioners’ sugar or cocoa powder for decoration

1. Adjust oven rack to lower middle rack and heat oven to 325 degrees.

2. Line bottom of an 8-inch springform pan with parchment and grease pan sides. Cover pan underneath and along sides with heavy-duty foil and set in a large roasting pan.

3. Bring kettle of water to a boil.

4. Beat eggs with a hand-held mixer at high speed until volume doubles to approximately 1 quart, about 5+ minutes. (By setting the hand held mixer on a pile of books, you can avoid having to hold the mixer for five minutes while you beat the eggs to a froth. Alternately, you can have your child hold the mixer, thus involving them in a fun activity and keeping them out of other things for 5 minutes.) :-)

5. Meanwhile, melt chocolate and butter (and coffee or liqueur, if using) in a large heat-proof bowl set over a pan of simmering water until smooth and very warm (about 115 degrees), stirring once or twice. (For the microwave, melt chocolate and butter together at 50 percent power until smooth and warm, 4-6 minutes, stirring once or twice.)

6. Fold 1/3 of egg foam into chocolate mixture using a large rubber spatula until only a few streaks of egg are visible; fold in ½
remaining foam, then the last of the foam, until the mixture is completely mixed.

7. Scrape the batter into prepared springform pan and smooth surface with a rubber spatula. (Thoroughly lick spatula and bowl – also a great activity for salmonella-immune children.)

8. Set roasting pan on oven rack and pour enough boiling water to come about halfway up the side of the spring form pan.

9. Bake until cake has risen slightly, edges are just beginning to set, and a thin glazed crust has formed on the surface (an instant-read thermometer inserted in the center will read 140 degrees), about 22-25 minutes. (If using a 9-inch pan, rather than 8-inch, the baking time will be 18-20 minutes.)

10. Remove the cake pan from water bath and set on a wire rack; cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate overnight to mellow (up to 4 days).

11. About 30 minutes prior to serving, remove from springform pan sides, invert cake on a plate covered with waxed paper, peel off the parchment pan liner, and turn cake right side up on a serving platter.

12. Sieve light sprinkling of confectioners’ sugar or cocoa powder over the cake to decorate, if desired.

Bon Appetit!

WM

HELLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO crew of the Thursday Thirteen. Do you remember being five? I do not. I vaguely remember my kindergarten teacher trying to sweet-talk me into taking a nap, and I was no napper. That’s about all I remember. I’m hoping that by keeping this blog, I’ll be able to help my kids keep more of their memories than I have. It could work.

(more…)

No, don’t take it away! (Again, kid-friendly.)

“This world
compared to You —

a lake so tiny
even a mustard seed
is too large for it to hold.

Yet from the lake all Beings drink.

And into it deer, jackals,
rhinoceri, sea-elephants falling.

From the earliest moments of birth,
falling and falling in You.”

— Lal Ded

“Once upon a time lived a young woman from a St. Louis suburb. She was an honor roll student, she played the violin, she donated blood and volunteered for American Heart Association walks. She elected to put off college for a while and joined the Army once out of school. At Fort Campbell, KY, she was assigned as a weapons supply manager to the 129th Corps Support Battalion.

She was LaVena Johnson, private first class, and she died near Balad, Iraq, on July 19, 2005, just eight days shy of her twentieth birthday. She was the first woman soldier from Missouri to die while serving in Iraq or Afghanistan.

The tragedy of her story begins there.”

To read more (be warned, please — this is not an easy read), and sign a petition, go here.

Rest in peace, hon.

Lookit who is so sweet, and likes hockey! Miss Jen.

Happy Sunday, everyone.

WM

Please! Thank you!

At Wacky House, we need more bandwidth specifically to accommodate my YouTube and ABC downloads obsession. My readers! I love you! And I am expending much bandwidth to fulfill your needs.

Are you wondering how Hockey God’s game went tonight? SO FRICKIN’ GREAT. They won 3-2. (Hockey Fact #1: You always want to get the puck in the net more times than the other team.)

“That team,” my husband says to one of the other guys, after the game, “they had trouble standing up. They were falling down pretty easily.” His teammate nods in agreement.

Yeah, especially when their feet got in the way of our teams’ sticks.

I met some of the other hockey wives from the team and really, they could not be sweeter. Especially when their husbands are kicking ass and not getting any ribs broken. (Hockey Fact #2: They don’t tape ribs anymore. And they take about two months to heal.)

(Hockey Fact #3: You can break a rib just from coughing, say, from a bad case of the flu. One of the hockey wives herself experienced this. So bwaaa — hockey, dangerous?)

(Hockey Fact #4: Most of us rabid hockey fans have come to the conclusion that other sports — soccer is the sport most frequently mentioned — are way more dangerous than hockey. In hockey you wear pads, see? And a helmet. In soccer you do not. My uncle, for example, broke his leg twice playing soccer and did not realize it until he broke it a third time.)

One of the other hockey wives, in the parking lot as we were leaving, was giving me evil eye and shaking her head. I’m like, what the hell’s up with her? My husband says, “You’re wearing my jersey…” (a clean one! thank you) “…and they lost to us.” Oh, right!

(Hockey Fact #5: Hockey wives sometimes mix it up. I will sidestep any brawls.)

love,

WM

I always forget about our hoard of food in the basement. That’s right. Since we’re talking about moving (not for awhile — a loooooong while, but still!) it got me thinking about all the green beans and marinara sauce in our downstairs freezer. Because that stash, it is not moving with us cross-country. (We had a bumper crop of roma tomatoes last summer, and bush beans. This year we’re going back to pole beans — easier pickin’.)

A shelf of green beans, a shelf of marinara… and then there are the bananas. I, the girl who loves bananas but does not particularly care for banana bread, will not compost overripe bananas. They get peeled, then thrown into a freezer bag (there are always three bananas. Never two, or four — just three) and into the freezer.

Where I mistake them for frozen breadsticks, which they are not. It’s always a shocker.

But I’m saving them for banana bread. Which I mostly refuse to bake. (I also freeze shredded zucchini, which I am better about using up — I love zucchini bread.) New solution: Banana-Zucchini Bread. Easy. Does this give you any insight into how my mind works? Geesh, that’s a little weird.

Once on a trip to Mexico, Hockey God discovered Tortitas de Ejotes (Green Bean Fritters). He was craving them one night and came up with this recipe:

1 tablespoon olive oil
1 teaspoon balsamic vinegar
1 teaspoon dry mustard
1 egg, well-beaten
3/4 cup flour
1 teaspoon salt
black pepper, to taste
1/4 cup milk
2 cups cooked & diced green beans
1/2 cup vegetable oil

Mix olive oil, vinegar & mustard in a medium bowl.

In another bowl, combine the egg, flour, milk, salt & pepper.

Add the vinaigrette.

Add the milk a little at a time, stirring in. Add the beans.

Heat oil in a medium frying pan over medium heat. Place the tortitas de ejotes, in patties two-inches in diameter, in the skillet. Cook until browned on both sides. To serve: top with mole, sprinkle with cojita (queso seco — dry cheese), and serve with sides of black beans and rice.

Bon appetit!

WM

…I owe you these.

Every day I read Rockstar Mommy, Miss Zoot, Dooce and Amalah and no, not always in that order.

I really have grown fond of the lovely Suzanne, at DearReader. I log on every morning and like magic! Three new chapters for me. (I subscribe to one fiction and two non-fiction clubs.) I delete some, read some, devour some, and if I really love a book I put it on reserve at the library.

And… more favorites: Mrs. Flinger; Planet Nomad (whose husband, a photographer, has a couple of sites, too — go look at his photos. They are fantastic); I read my husband, but of course; and my girl Leslie Gould (note to both of you: update more!); and aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaargh! I just lost the rest of this post.

Here I am again with a handful more of my favorites. And I promise I’ll do this again soon to include some of you who I read often, but haven’t included today:

* Terrible Mother (because we all need a little more poetry, prose and angst)
* Monkey Disaster
* Gallivanting Monkey
* Breed ’em and Weep
* Moxie!
* the lyfe so short, the Craft so long to lerne
* DotMoms
* MamaToo
* Dear Prudence
* Exceedingly Mundane and… last but not least…
* Overheard in PDX

And that’s all for now.

(Except for Plain Jane Mom and Mrs. Mogul.)

(And Pass the Torch.)

Is my daughter, Wacky Girl, the world’s youngest blogger? According to the Internet she is. I can’t find anyone 7 or younger who blogs, other than her. (She’ll be 8 in September.)

Sometimes she types her own stuff (blogging, fiction and e-mails); sometimes she dictates to me and I type. (If we’re in a hurry.) She’s been typing up her own stuff for awhile now and started writing stories when she was wee tiny lass.

Until two years ago her typing looked like this:
urytghfjknvjhjmsam,f zynbujxbnxmb
nyiurndytbhdrsummicnybu

Then it looked like this:
dear wacky boy I love you. I am glad you are my borther. Did you like that waffle? We are going shopping, and then comeing home to play, and giting back into the car to go iceskating.

Now it looks like this:
THE FOUR MONSTERS
by Wacky Girl
There lived two monsters who lived in a creaky old house, with spooky old trees aound them. Their names were Jill and Fred. They each had only one friend, Liz and Peter. They were the only four monsters. They were all five, but one was six – that was Jill. She was the oldest. She was glad, becase she could swim and the other three could not…

Anyway. We have her site password-protected, until she is a teen and discovers MySpace, at which point I will lock myself in the bathroom and sob. If you come across any kid blogs we might like, please leave the addresses in comments or send an e. Mercy bouquet.

xxox

Wacky Mommy