Yum....

Flourless Chocolate Brownies

8 oz. chocolate (She recommends semi-sweet, but I used Ghiradelli's bitter-sweet chocolate which is really, really dark)

• 1 cup butter
• 1 cup sugar
• 2 teaspoons vanilla extract
• 3 eggs, beaten
• 1 1/2 cups ground almonds
• 1 cup chopped walnuts

Preheat the oven to 325 degrees Fahrenheit.

Over low heat in a heavy saucepan melt butter and chocolate together.

Take the pan off heat and add the sugar and vanilla. Let the mixture cool a little.

Beat the eggs into the pan with the ground almonds (I measured the almonds first and then ground them in a mini-processor and it worked fine. Mine were a bit mealy, so I recommend that when you think the almonds are done grounding and you can't get them any finer, grind them for about 30 more seconds.)

Turn batter into a 9-inch square baking pan and bake fr 25-30 minutes (I baked mine for 35) by which time the edges and most of the top will have set but it will still be a bit wiggly in the middle when shook. Allow to cool and then cut into 16 (or, if like me, 9) pieces and serve. Brownies will be a bit fudgy and gooey - not at all cakelike.

Everyone is Polish on Dyngus Day!

Are you ready for today's local festivities? (I wonder what the Secret Service will do to any interested suitor who douses Chelsea with water?)

Apparently, there's more to the tradition than what filtered down to our family. It seems that girls are first supposed to "swat boys with pussy willows, and boys respond by dousing them with water." Buffalo officials are worried that a local pussy willow shortage could result in "not as many romantic outcomes."

And in case the water thing gets out of hand on this cold March morning, lets remember the origins of this holiday:

During the years of the first Millennium of Christianity, baptisms were celebrated exclusively during the Easter season, particularly Holy Saturday and the Octave of Easter. Tradition states that Prince Mieszko I along with his court were baptized on Easter Monday. Thus, Dyngus Day and its rites of sprinkling with water have become a folk celebration in thanksgiving for the fact that the first king of Poland was baptized into Christianity, bringing Catholicism to Poland.

Imagine Dad's Surprise

when he was reading the Scotsman today and saw this!


It's practically like being famous! Sort of. A little bit.

Received Today

We regret to inform you that the Voge-Klejeski wedding scheduled for April 12 in Duluth has been canceled. Please remember to cancel any accommodations that you have made. We apologize for any inconvenience that this may cause you.
Sincerely,
Brady & Donna

A Little Entertainment For Gianna

Surely, "mind over matter" is a valid skill to practice during a psychology class.
I've never heard of it before, but apparently, she's not the only one with this idea.

Don't feel obligated to read this at all; I'm just remarkably frustrated by this whole thing. GLOBAL WARMING HAS NOTHING TO DO WITH PSYCHOLOGY! A few thoughts:

• If you're going to make us read such edifying and scholarly articles such as "How Mankind is Sleepwalking to the End of the Earth" (published in that well-known scholarly journal The Independent/UK), please at least make sure they're more recent than 2004; even I know that there's a lot of new research in the last 4 years.
  
• Also, electricity is NOT a "basic human right"
  
• It's okay, though; I knew how this was going to go when he introduced the unit by saying, "Now, I know that there are some conflicting opinions. You may agree with these [articles], or you may have a lot of issues to work through."
  
• And finally, the winner of the Absolute B.S. Award: "The scary thing is, whenever you have prestigious scientific bodies making computer models, in every case, they have been right. In every case, invariably."
  

</rant>

Oh My Gosh!

It just occurred to us that we didn't have any dancing girls at Mass yesterday!