A French Dessert

I get to come and visit the Motherdear and other family members for a bit, and so last night we all got together and ate lots of lasagna and then I made a dessert for everyone that I learned about in France a few years ago. You may remember a previous post about pear and chocolate tarts, and having this dessert in France was what originally made me aware that pears and chocolate are really really good together. Here's what it looks like:

Pears and ice cream with chocolate sauce

You need a good quality vanilla ice cream, put pear slices on it and top it with chocolate sauce or just melted semi-sweet chocolate chips. If you use chocolate sauce it will stay pliable and will be easier to eat and you'll be able to taste the chocolate more. Plain melted chocolate will harden immediately on the ice cream and you won't get the full flavor effect because of the chocolate being so cold and hard, but it will still be pretty good. Sister-In-Law had her's with cinnamon instead of chocolate and said that was very good together too. It is nice to use fresh pears, but they should be very ripe and smooth and not hard and crunchy and gritty. These pears were a little bit hard and gritty. Little Brother suggested that we warm them up and Older Sister suggested that we cook them with brown sugar so that they would be soft and even more delicious. That got me thinking, you could probably sprinkle pear halves with sugar and maybe cinnamon and cook them on the grill and immediately serve them in this manner and that would be pretty heavenly. Here is all of us (except me) together eating and being silly. Good times.

enjoying each others company and dessert

There are a few interesting things to note in this picture. First: isn't that table nice? Little Brother (on the left) made it all by himself in woodshop class in high school. I want one too! And we are all in the house that he and his wife just bought - isn't that great? Second: there is a green package sitting by Motherdear, which used to contain seaweed. Perhaps someday I will tell you about the awesomeness of seaweed and something you can do with it so that people will eat it without being weirded out. Third: there is this girl sitting by Older Brother who was very nice and we all liked her very much and it was very cool to get to hang out with her. We even saw them holding hands, so maybe we'll get to see more of her in the future.