Mostly I just want to show off these pictures. All this foodie-blog reading is making me more adventurous in the kitchen, and it seems that I’m buying an excess of food just so that I can ruin some of it and still have something to eat.

Here, my main thrill was in playing with chocolate, and trying to make something that would look shmancy. I wanted really offbeat, organic shapes, and I wanted an extra-dark chocolate so that it would be hard and hold up just fine. First, I covered my counters in wax paper. Then, I melted some extra dark (70% cacao) bittersweet chocolate with some mint oil over a double boiler. Once it was thoroughly melted and mixed, I took a fork and just started dripping and swirling the chocolate onto the wax paper. I slipped the sheets of wax paper in the freezer for about 10 minutes, and that was all it took to thoroughly harden (and chill!) the chocolate. To get the chocolate off the paper, I stationed a large bowl atop a chair, and put it next to my counter. I ran the wax paper along the edge of the counter, and the chocolate fell off it in both large and small bits into the bowl. Then I just popped that bowl into the freezer until serving time!

The base of the dessert is store-bought angel food cake, and some great strawberries which I let stew in a little apple cider and some powdered sugar. But mostly it’s all about playing with chocolate. And the mint with the strawberries was perfect. I also like that this is a dessert for which you can make all the components the day before, and then it’s just a matter of five minutes to assemble them on the plate when you’re ready to serve. Great for hosting after you’ve only just gotten off work!

It’s like we’re done with the whole living-above-ground thing, and we’ve decided we’d rather be under the dirt than over it. That said, these green roofs rock.

Dear Violet,

It’s good to see you finally delivering on some of your promises — like the promise to utilize the Nabaztag’s built-in RFID reader as advertised. It’s only been like three years since you announced that feature, anyway.

And it’s good that you’ve finally, finally updated the website. It reassures me that you haven’t all fallen into a deep black pit, and I like that you are explicitly trying to support user apps now. Also, I know there are some already out there, but you guys should probably release your own Nabaztag iPhone app.

If you think I’m going to spend money on Mir:ror, though, you’ve got another think coming. Until you can prove that you can reliably support the products you’ve already released, I’m not giving you another dime. I’d like a non-buggy website, non-crashing servers, services that work reliably as advertised… you get the picture. Just do what you said you would, already, okay? You’ve got a great, fun product, and as soon as I get internet re-installed, I’ll be back on the bandwagon. I just want to see you do well.

Thanks,

yr customer

PS. “The Internet of Things starts here” is a dumb tagline. I mean seriously.