Blathr Wayne Lorentz

For Halloween this year, my wife bought me a chocolate toad.

This is no cheap injection-moulded Hershey-grade nosh. This is a hefty hopper, decorated to a level of realism that is startling, if youʼre not expecting it to be there when you open the refrigerator door.

Mr. Toad is from the Fortnum & Mason department store in London. The confection connection between chocolate, amphibians, and Britannia may put you in mind of the fictional chocolate frogs from Harry Potter. The difference is those are in movies, and this is in my kitchen.

It weighs almost half a pound, and Iʼm not sure how I'm going to eat it. I have no problem biting the heads off of Easter bunnies. They look like cartoons. But this knobby indulgence has sugary eyes that look straight into your soul.

Dessert tonight is some sorta chocolate mousse cake. Amtrak makes a fine sorta chocolate mousse cake. If my wife wasnʼt sitting right there, I would ask this sorta chocolate mousse cake to marry me.

Wait, I found the description:

Flourless Chocolate Torte: The perfect paring of bittersweet chocolates, topped with semisweet chocolate truffle ganache and drizzled with chocolate sauce and whipped cream.

I donʼt know why it has a hole in. Maybe thatʼs where the calories go.

I donʼt think I have ever turned down an offer of carrot cake. Amtrakʼs is a solid player.

An old family recipe made with raisins, pineapple, and walnuts, frosted with a cream cheese icing and drizzles with white chocolate and caramel sauce

Darcie: “You made a Jell-O mold?”

Me: “Yep!”

Darcie: “What flavor?”

Me: “Raspberry failure!”

A tart made from local piñon pine nuts. Very good, but awkward to eat because the great big pine nuts roll off the itty bitty forklet.

Wilfred Brimley, no!!!