Why have I never thought of this before?!?!

Okay, I'm going to bite on Andy's challenge, at least sort of.  I was actually checking the blog to post something really quickly anyway.

For dinner tonight, I needed something quick, since I had to go to the store after picking the kids up.  I settled on pasta with sausage and swiss chard.  I got some bulk hot Italian pork sausage and fried it up, then added about 5-6 cloves of chopped garlic.  We haven't been eating much pork sausage lately - I mainly use sausage in yorkshire pudding, and I've found that chicken sausages are just as good for that.  But, tonight I really wanted some good hot pork sausage.  So, like I said, I cooked up about 1/2 lb with some garlic, then threw in a two big bunches of chopped, washed swiss chard.  I spun the chard in our lettuce spinner after washing it, so it was only damp.  Cooked with the lid on to steam the chard, then removed the lid to evaporate the excess water.  I just made sure to turn it a few times so nothing burned.  It was pretty decent with a little parm on top of pasta.

But, what I really signed on to post was what we came up with for dessert.  I bought some cherries the other day which turned out to be only okay, but which still need to be eaten.  I also bought some peaches against my better judgment.  Aleks cut one up in my lunch today, and it was surprisingly good - enough so that I was willing to try serving the others uncooked.  Will picked out some plums today at the store, though without supervision.  Apparently we have different ideas of what "they're soft!" means.  The net result was that I had some mediocre stone fruit to get rid of, and while I wanted to just cut them up to serve for dessert, I thought they needed a little extra.  So, I checked our ice cream stock.  Apparently, Aleks has been indulging in a bowl of ice cream every now and then, because we were almost out.  But I had whipping cream.  So, I set Will to making a little bit of whipped cream while I pitted the cherries.  He slightly overwhipped the cream, so I had to run damage control, at which point I had a brilliant idea (if I do say so myself).  I added some cocoa.  WHY HAVE I NEVER HEARD OF CHOCOLATE WHIPPED CREAM BEFORE!?!!!?!?  It's amazing!  (By the way, adding cocoa didn't fix the over-whipping problem.  I just added a little more cream for that.  But, it all worked out, since the chocolate whipped cream was amazing, so we all wanted extra anyway.)  Cream, a little powdered sugar, cocoa.  Done.  It doesn't have to be sweet.

Will is ready to open a chocolate whipped cream shop, complete with cinnamon chocolate whipped cream, and double chocolate whipped cream with chocolate chips in it.  I may try chocolate cardamom whipped cream, since cardamom whipped cream is my other favorite.  Ah, the possibilities are endless...

I would say that stone fruit and chocolate are not the most obvious combination, for good reason, but strawberries and chocolate whipped cream with a glass of red wine sounds divine to me.

-Maggie