FENNEL!

Well, I found fennel, finally. I also found chestnut paste.

I decided to make this chestnut mousse cake thing that I saw being made on television. Why, oh why didn't it occur to me that this was a *British* television program?

Anyway, the recipe called for chestnut paste, and a base that was kind of fruitcakey. Obviously, I wasn't going to just accept a recipe that called for fruitcake, so I bought chestnuts, roasted them, made sort of florentine cookies out of them, crushed those, drizzled chocolate over them, and this was my crust.

I guess I should take a step back and admit that I had never actually eaten a chestnut before, nor had I roasted them. This seems like a fairly straightforward process. You cut a slit in the chestnuts, put them in the oven, and then eventually you peel them.

I don't understand the appeal. It takes forever to peel these things, and then they're just basically rubbery and have very little flavor. More like a bean than a nut, really. It was an awful lot of effort for something that was just kind of bland.

So I opened the can of chestnut paste and discovered that chestnut paste smells and looks a bit like refried beans. I then tasted it. It turns out that it tastes surprisingly similar to refried beans as well. I had just purchased all of the ingredients to make a mousse that included a half can of refried beans.

I figure, heck, mixing this with mascarpone and whipped cream, well, you could mix just about anything with those two things and come up with something fantastic, right?

This was perhaps the most boring mousse I had ever tasted. No, it was by far the most boring mousse I had ever tasted. I realized while typing that sentence that previously I didn't think that something called "mousse" *could* be described as boring, er, unless you're talking about a hairstyling product.

Anyway, it was bland.

So I developed this strategy, or maybe even a life philosophy. I'm not sure. But I decided that if something is that bland, adding rum surely must help. Which is what I did. And I am pleased to report that it does, in fact, work. However, I do not see a need to make this chestnut stuff again. If I were to melt a bit of chocolate and use that instead of the half-can of refried beans, I wouldn't have needed to add the rum to make it entertaining. All in all, I see no compelling reason to avoid the use of chocolate.

Ooo, that's two life philosophies. To wit: 1. If it's bland, add rum. 2. There is no compelling reason to avoid the use of chocolate.

I have so much to thank the British for.

All right, so tonight I'm meeting up with Laurence, and we're going to dinner with some friends. This will be quite a good deal of fun, I am sure! These are the friends I met the night I met Laurence. I don't know how many people are going to be there, but there's just something nice about my first dinner party with friends I met after moving here.

Oh, dear. She's British. And cooking.

By the way, everyone who has tasted things like the cookies I've baked has gone on and on about how I should go into business cooking. Generally, I feel like that sort of thing is said to be polite. But now I know that I am a better cook than at least one of the TV chefs here. This seems impossible.

How much imagination can it take to dip a shortbread cookie into chocolate? Or figure out that a dessert recipe that calls for half a can of refried beans is probably worth adjusting?

Are these actually intelligent, educated people?

All right, I'll stop ranting now. It's about time to meet up with Laurence anyway.