SusieJ's Advent Calendar: December 15, 2008

The recipe: Chocolate roll

This is the chocolate lover's dream cake. The flourless cake has the most intense chocolate flavor of any you've tasted, and the lightly sweetened whipped cream filling makes it light rather than heavy. would you believe it's only eggs, sugar, coffee, chocolate and whipped cream?

The surprise: Antique lights

Bill Nelson has a passion for antique electric Christmas lights. His site, showcasing his personal collection, explores the history of this Christmas tradition. My father had the Disney light set featured here, and he nearly set fire to the house with bubble lights like these. (They get very hot when left on all night.)

Explosive

About once a year, my husband roasts a pair of Cornish game hens for us. He stuffs the little darlings with aromatics, and pours a bit of wine into the pan. It's a simple but yummy recipe.

The two hens are too small for the giant, turkey-sized pan used only at Thanksgiving; Jorj usually roasts them in a smaller, oven-safe, tempered glass pan. One evening, he realized he'd forgotten the wine (or perhaps it was just time to add the wine) and he poured in about a cup of cold wine. The pan shattered almost immediately. We shared the remaining hen for dinner.

Having lived through that, you would think I would have had the sense to not try grilling in a rain storm.

It wasn't quite that insane. I wanted to grill steaks for dinner, but it was raining. I pulled the gas grill up to the back door where it would be under the eaves; the gutters were dripping, but just a bit and mostly on the grill hood. Just by opening the door, I could open the grill.

The first side of the steaks cooked without incident. Then I opened the grill, and the gutter dripped onto the glass viewing window on the hood. The window shattered all over the steaks.