Of Chocolate and Tres Leches

I love chocolate.

However, mine is not a simple love. Chocolate and I have a very complex relationship. Indeed, it could be said that one does not fully understand me until one fully understands the depth of my chocolate cravings.

And yet, recently, just this month in fact, I encountered a dessert so good that it has almost made me (gasp) forget chocolate.

It is the very un-chocolaty tres leches cake from Masa, a fancy Mexican restaurant in downtown Minneapolis.

I wrote of my first Masa tres leches encounter here on this blog and I've also been talking it up to those within ear shot.

And last night, I also managed to talk my hubby and another couple into heading downtown and getting some tres leches cake.

Masa is kiddy-corner from Minneapolis' Orchestra Hall and on warm summer weekends, there is free music outside in the plaza. We stopped in at Masa and ordered up the dessert to go.

We ordered two slices of tres leches, and then, just as the hostess took off for the kitchen, my chocolate dark side got the better of me. I called her back and switched one of the tres leches slices to the chocolate cake.

A massive Frida Kahlo posed in the entrance way kept us company as we waited for our take out cake. Once it arrived, we took it across the street to Peavy Plaza for some people watching, some music listening and some sweet eating.

I was a little worried that I'd built up the tres leches to such epic goodness that it wouldn't impress my friends. But it was every bit as delicious as I remembered and all of us were sucking our forks clean of every last tres leches lick.

And even though the chocolate cake was also very good, I actually (double gasp) preferred the (you guessed it) tres leches.

The Magnetic Pull of Che

My Che-loving bud, Jen, and I met up again this week. This time in honor of my birthday.

She produced a brightly-wrapped present tied with a spring-green ribbon and when I opened it, I found -- surprise surprise -- a Che-themed gift.

The "Create-A-Commie" is one of those faces printed on a flat, magnetic panel enclosed in a thin plastic box that you're supposed to decorate with magnetic "hair." The makers of this particular toy encourage you to give your skills a go at recreating the face of a famous communist.

Out of all the commies named -- Gorby, Castro, Lenin, Marx, Brezhnev and Trotsky -- Che is the only one given the distinction of a definitive article.

We, of course, noticed this right away. He is not just any Che. He is "the" Che. As if there were any other.

And yet, in looking over the complete packaging, I couldn't help but notice that one very significant commie was left off the list: Mao.

Considering the toy was "Made in China" I can't help but wonder whether this was simply an oversight or a conscious decision.

Night-O-Neil

Good Beer.

Good Food.

Good Coffee.

Good Chocolate.

Good Songs.

Good Friends.

What more could a girl want from a night on the town? Not much.

Months ago, while shopping for Mother's Day gifts for our moms, my friend J.P. and I came up with this fantastic plan: Neil Diamond was coming to town. Since our parents are the best-est of friends, wouldn't it be grand if we rolled Mother's Day and Father's Day into one and took them all to the Neil Diamond concert? Well, that's exactly what we did and last night was the night.

We headed for St. Paul, as that's where the concert was scheduled to play, and started the night at Great Waters, a local brew pub. There were eight of us around the table and between appetizers and the main meal, we managed to sample many of their beers.

The sky had been cloud-covered all day, but as our server cleared away our dinner plates, blue was showing overhead. We paid up and decided to stroll through downtown St. Paul.

We ended up in the lobby of the St. Paul Hotel, a posh place poised to host the biggest of big spenders when the Republican convention rolls in to town in just one month's time. But we weren't staying the night, we were simply looking for coffee and dessert and they obliged, of course.

And finally it was time for Neil. He put on quite a show, singing just a few tunes from his new album but mostly sticking to his oldies and goodies. He encouraged hearty audience participation with Sweet Caroline, Song Sung Blue, Forever in Blue Jeans, Cracklin' Rose and America.

So great are this songs, however, that the crowd hardly needed prompting to join in. Being the entertainer that he is, Mr. Diamond probably learned long ago that it's useless to stop people from singing along. Better to let them join in and feel a part of the show.

And feel a part of the show I did, even though I was on the "young" side of the average audience age. But music enthusiasts always say that music transcends language and culture. And if it's really good music, it can even transcend generations.

Tres Servings of Masa's Tres Leches

My friend Jen (who is as Che obsessed as me) turned another year better this week and in honor of her birthday, we headed out for a fancy dinner on the town. We went to Masa, a trendy spendy Mexican place on Nicollet Mall in downtown Minneapolis.

It was Jen's pick, but I was equally eager to eat there. Last year, not long after the restaurant's doors first opened, I interviewed the head chef - Saul Chavez - about his Mexican upbringing for an article I was writing. Mexican food, he had said, wasn't all refried beans and tacos, and through Masa's menu, he was trying to showcase the finer side of Mexican cuisine.

Consider it showcased! Between the cocktails and the main plates (mine being a scrumptiously rich chicken mole) Jen and I managed to wrack up a $70 bill!

When it was time for dessert I deferred to Jen. It was her birthday, after all, and anyway, I already knew exactly what she was going to pick: the tres leches cake.
Jen loves tres leches cake. I could live without it; chocolate will forever call my name. But since I often hang out with Jen, and since we often go out for dessert, I've sampled many a tres leches about town.

However, Masa's tres leches cake is the best tres leches cake I've ever had!

I had only planned on one bite, maybe two. Instead, I gobbled half the helping, and even scarfed down the last two fork fulls once Jen said she was all done.

The cake was ultra moist, as tres leches is supposed to be, but unlike so many of the other tres leches I've tasted, this one wasn't overly wet. Its white, whipped topping was dusted with zest of lime and two swirls of refreshing fruit puree - one mango, the other grapefruit - polished off the presentation.

I could easily have eaten tres servings of this tres leches!

Towing the Labyrinth Line

There is a labyrinth in a public garden not far from my home. I've known of its existence for some time now, but just never got around to checking it out. Today, however, in an attempt to break myself out of my mental summer slump, I decided to go seek something new in my own back yard.

A labyrinth, I knew, was not a maze, not a place to enter and get lost. Well, actually it is. But unlike a maze where the point is to get lost, turned around and successfully back out again for fun, a labyrinth is a place to get lost in thought, a place for serious contemplation.

I doubted this would work on me. I have a hard time turning off my brain and it didn't seem like following a path of paverstones set in the grass would be an activity capable of overhauling my mind and shutting it down.

But guess what! It did!

I took my first step, wound myself along the path and before I knew it, all thoughts of my nagging to-do list were gone. All I focused on was the path and the way the blades of grass grew up in between the stones.

By the time I reached the center stone, the end of the line, my body felt so compelled to keep trailing the path that it was a jolt to my consciousness to have stopped moving.

I noted the sensation, curious that the ancient idea of a labyrinth had worked some sort of magic on me, and then turned around and retraced my steps, going out the same way I went in.

Blogging Brain Gone Bad

"Blogging is easy. Writing is hard."

~Jennifer Shreve

I came across this little quote in a book called Not Quite What I Was Planning. Its pages are filled with six-word quips about life and death and everything in between. Six words were all any of the writers were allowed.

I've blogged about my fascination with this book in the past, so I don't intend to sing its praises for too long here. Instead, I've decided to write about this particular quote, this "blogging is easy, writing is hard" idea. It is an idea I used to believe, but now I'm not so sure.

It used to be that blogging was so much easier than writing. Blogging was off the top of my head, as compared to "writing," which took forethought and persistence.

Blogging was also a chance to exercise my "visual" tendencies. I've always considered myself a visual learner and I like to play around with photography and layout design, a thrill that is rarely afforded to me as a freelance writer. I just turn in the words; someone else gets to illustrate my article. Not so with blogging. It's my blog and therefore my "vision."

But lately, I'm having trouble doing much writing or blogging. Frankly, I'm having trouble doing anything that feels ultra productive or professional. I've passed my days putting pictures in photo albums, walking my dogs, reading books, drinking beer on the porch, lazing around.

It's been a beautiful July in Minnesota. The sky is the most perfect shade of blue. The trees are the most perfect shade of green. The sun is the most perfect warming light. It is exactly the July I always remember July being when I was a little girl and it is because of this, perhaps, that I have reverted to girlhood ways. School is out and my brain is on vacation.

Historic Donaldsonville, Louisiana

As we head into a big holiday weekend here in the U.S., here's a new spin on a familiar public awareness campaign:

Speaking Frozen Daiquiri

My recent Louisiana daiquiri drive-thru experience has daiquiris on my mind.

They (daiquiris) make a strange subject -- perhaps -- for a blog entry, but it just so happens that I came home from my road trip through The South and got the bug to clean my office.

This bug doesn't come along very often, so when it makes an appearance, I've learned to heed it.

On this cleaning spree I decided to go through my book shelves. They are full and this is a problem as all the books I'm continuing to acquire are stacked in piles on the floor.

One of the books I pulled from my shelves during my cleaning is Islands in the Stream by Ernest Hemingway.

I bought and read the book after traveling to Havana, for it is partially set in the city.

I also bought the book because I'd been told the main character spends a lot of time drinking daiquiris at El Floridita, the Havana bar where daiquiris are said to have originated and where Ernest Hemingway is said to have spent a lot of time.

Like many tourists in Havana, I spent an evening while I was there drinking daiquiris at El Floridita in homage to Hemingway.

It's been a few years now since I read the book. I remember a main character that struggled with being a good artist and a good dad. And - as I'd been told - I remember a main character that passed ample time drinking daiquiris.

Turns out, I underlined Hemingway's every mentioned of daiquiris while I was reading the book.

For example, I underlined this:

He was drinking another frozen daiquiri with no sugar in it and as he lifted it, heavy and the glass frost-rimmed, he looked at the clear part below the frapped top and it reminded him of the sea. The frapped part of the drink was like the wake of a ship and the clear part was the way the water looked when the bow cut it when you were in shallow water over marl bottom. That was almost the exact color.

And, among many other words, this:

All I know how to speak now is frozen daiquiri. Tu hablas frozen daiquiri tu?


Photos:

Big Easy Daiquiris in New Orleans.
Drinking an original daiquiri at El Floridita in Havana.