The Chocolate Cure

Chocolate - Mint Sorbet

From The Herbfarm Cookbook

by Jerry Traunfeld

3/4 cup sugar

3 cups water

6  4inch sprigs of peppermint, chocolate mint or spearmint

6 ounces premium bittersweet or semisweet chocolate - chopped

( I used Sunspire Organic 65% Cacao bittersweet chocolate - it's vegan)

1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa

1.  Syrup: Bring the sugar and water to a boil in a medium size saucepan. Add the mint, cover, remove from heat, and steep for 30 minutes. Strain and return the syrup to the saucepan.

2. Sorbet: Return the syrup to a simmer. Add the chocolate and cocoa, remove the pan from the heat, and whisk until smooth.  Refrigerate the mixture until thoroughly chilled.  Freeze in an ice cream maker according to the manufacturer's directions.

You get a chocolate fix from this sorbet, without the leaded gut you get from some chocolate desserts. It's simply refreshing.

Mid - morning B went off to the Market. Miss M wanted to stay home. She was very quiet for about 10 minutes. The she appeared at my office door and declared that we must make a fort. She had already started. I followed her to the front door where she had lined up a row of shoes to mark one side of the fort and block any ones entrance. Clearly she would get her Mother's attention when she returned from the Market. 

Miss M and I have made many forts, so I pulled out the big blanket and the card table. The blanket fits nicely over the table and then some.  We took then some and stretched it to the couch and secured it with pillows.  Then Miss M made a floor with a half dozen of her baby blankets.

At dawn I had sat on that very couch with my coffee, the house asleep, the cat brush and a pair of scissors in my lap. I hoped Kitty Hawk to join me. She doesn't always join me. But she had some dreadlocks that needed cutting and I was ready, just in case.

You're killing her, the vet told me a couple of weeks ago when he weighed Kitty Hawk. She should be 10#s and she's 15#. Talk about shame. I felt horrible. She's a long hair, you've seen her. I knew she had put on some weight when I couldn't get her into her cat carrier and had to load her by taking the top off the carrier, lifting her into the bottom half and putting the top back on. She was heavy for sure.

The first week of her diet, she complained a lot. I learned to rationed her food a little at a time throughout the day to keep the protests to a minimum. And I told her that if she was that hungry, she could take some initiative and catch one of many gophers out in the yard. (She'll never go vegan.) I thought I was so funny.

She did join me this morning and when I lifted her onto the couch and rubbed her belly I'm sure I felt a thinner cat. I cut off a few dreadlocks and she indeed looked like she had lost weight. Whew.

At about 4 this afternoon I'm on my way out the door, except getting out the front door, still blocked by a fort, was going to be tricky. I saw something flutter over there. It was a bird. A brown towhee I think. It was trapped between the fort and the front door. Kitty Hawk was stalking near by. The joke was on me. I went out the back door, around the house and opened the front door. No one flew out. I left the front door open, ran back in the back door thinking I'd get back to the fort and shoo the bird out.

I had to leave. I had an appointment at 4:30. I saw nothing. Either the bird had made it safely out the front door or Kitty Hawk, also MIA, was munching somewhere out of sight.

So you see why chocolate was required today. Good thing my sorbet maker is always ready for loading.