Black Friday

Friday, Jake went to work. Now, I must say, I have never worked anywhere in my whole life where I didn’t get the day after Thanksgiving (or Christmas Eve) off. But, I never worked for the government. And they get all those other holidays off that the civilian employers don’t recognize. So, I guess it all works out in the end.

Carla and I ran a few errands in the morning, including resupplying my book stash. I underestimated again!

We all had decided that making another big dinner, or going out to eat, seems like too much trouble. So, we had picked up a wide variety of snack items: two types of cheese, Genoa salami, some salumi (that was excellent, but a bit chewy), humus, pita bread, some frozen horderves, three types of crackers, cheese spread, and so on. I also picked up some clementines and chocolate. Unfortunately, The only dark chocolate the store had was semi-sweet.

During the afternoon, I tried making my special dessert. I wanted to recreate that little bite of heaven I had back in that South Carolina tea room: a slice of clementine, dipped in chocolate.

So, I melted the dark chocolate in the microwave: 30 seconds, stir, then repeat until melted. You could always use the old school double boiler method, but this way you get the same results and fewer cleanups.

Meanwhile I peeled and segmented about three clementines.  I covered a paper plate with tin foil and, after dipping half of a clementine section in chocolate, I placed it on the plate.

I did two clementines for the trial run and saved the third. Then I put the plate in the fridge to harden.

After Jake came home and changed, we settled in. We watched movies (“Django” and “The Place Beyond the Pines”), and made and ate snacks.

At one point, we put out my dessert.

It was good, but not as great as I remembered. I think the sweetness of the clementine has to be balanced by a more bitter chocolate. The semi-sweet just confused the issue, dammit!

We finally called it quits about 9:30 p.m. and I read in bed for a bit. But not for long…