All Things Chocolate

Ok so...I LOVE chocolate. So when I was searching our "On Demand" shows for the FoodNetwork channel and saw "Good Eats: Chocolate 1", "Good Eats: Chocolate 2", and "Good Eats: Chocolate 3" I knew I just had to watch. Alton Brown is the guy that does the show "Good Eats" and he is very entertaining. He makes the show scientific, and not just about him cooking. So, back to the chocolate. He gives a brownie recipe that looks great, but I can't get my act together to actually make those brownies from scratch. I know they are much better than the box brownies, but the box is so convenient, not to mention EASY. So when he gave a recipe for hot chocolate I had to write it down because all it takes is mixing dry ingredients in a container. So this morning before work I decided to mix it all up. One of the ingredients is cayenne pepper. Yeah, it may seem strange, but it sort of made sense to me. You know, to give it a little bite. So, I was ok with that as an ingredient. However, there was no exact measurement given for the cayenne pepper. Alton simply said to add some cayenne pepper, and then proceeded to take the shaker and shake it directly on top pf all of the other ingredients and then mix them all together. How hard is that? ha. I put all of the ingredients, sans cayenne pepper, into a large bowl. Then I grabbed the cayenne pepper and shook some on the top of what was already in the bowl. Honestly, there was alot of other stuff in the bowl, so the red powder on top looked like nothing compared everything else. I put the lid on the bowl and shook that sucker up. I was proud of myself. Feeling like I had achieved something before even going to work, I proceeded to make myself a cup of hot chocolate. I then took a sip. Something was not right. I went and woke Travis up and told him he needed to taste it. Upon arriving back into the kitchen, I looked into my mug of tasty goodness and saw many red specks skimming the top of my beverage. Travis took a drink. He winced, uttered an "ughhh", and held the mug far away from his face. A moment later he says, "it tastes good, until it burns the back of your throat." So apparently, I made lethal hot chocolate. When it comes to cayenne pepper, there needs to be an exact measurement, because I guess I cannot eye ball it.

Nothing else is really going on around here. We started playing tennis a couple weeks ago. We look like a couple of freaks flailing about. Every day we looks a little less like a flailing freak though, and it is fun. In other words, we are not good. At all. But who can complain when the ocean is in site as your playing tennis? Not I.

March is a good month for whale watching around here, according to my sources. So we may try to watch some whales this weekend. If we get any good pictures I'll post some.