Saturday, July 18, 2009

Chocolate mousse-torte pie

12 oz semisweet chocolate
1 1/2 teasp instant coffee
1/3 cup boiling water
12 eggs, separated
1 cup sugar
2 teasp vanilla
1/8 teasp salt
1/2 or 1 cup heavy cream (optional)

Prehead oven to 350. Dissolve coffee in boiling water and place with chocolate in a double boiler over hot but not boiling water, stirring occasionally until the chocolate is melted. Beat egg yolks and sugar until thick and lemon colored. Gradually beat in chocolate and vanilla. Beat egg whites and salt until stiff. Stir 1/4 of egg whites into chocolate mixture then fold in the rest. Grease a deep dish pie pan, fill with half or less of the mousse mixture, and bake for 25 minutes or until puffed. Turn off heat and leave in oven for 5 minutes. Remove from oven and cool completely. Meanwhile chill the remaining mousse (first stir in 1/2 cup of cream whipped until firm if you prefer a slightly lighter mousse). When shell is cool cover it with the chilled mousse and chill 2 to 3 hours. The pie can be covered with 1 cup of cream, whipped, before serving.

John is home

John went to Spain with our son, who is studying abroad there for a month. They traveled together for a few days and then John went to Madrid alone for several days. Going to the Prado was on his life list. He had an international cell phone, and called me for help with several problems. The biggest one was that he missed his plane back from Madrid to Malaga and could only reschedule for four days later. By then he was ready to come home but Delta said the flights were very full so I persuaded him to go see our son in Ronda instead of spending his days trying to stand by for an earlier flight. He's glad he went but was very glad to be home.

He has terrible sleep patterns and has not been willing to try to change them. In recently months he usually falls asleep and sleeps most of the night in an office chair in front of his computer. Then he goes to bed for a few hours around 7 am. He has a chair that reclines and has a footstool and two different laptops but he likes to use the laptop in the privacy of his downstairs office. Last night he pinched a nerve in his arm and today has only partial use of his left dominant hand. I had to help him get dressed. So I expected that he would be at his worst when he got home from holding it together for a trip but he has ended up even worse.

When he is around me leaving anything hard or complicated for me to deal with, it is hard for me to imagine that he can travel alone. But he can still pull it together when he needs to. And he has lived all his life with making a lot of mistakes because of ADHD and is used to it. I discovered he hadn't put the registration paper in his car when it came in April (though he put the sticker on his license plate). He commented that he had made that mistake before.

Today's last straw was when he reported "we have a big problem," the sewer pipe had backed up into our downstairs bathroom. Guess who cleaned that up.