Recipes!

Chocolate and Chili Soup
10 oz heavy cream
5 oz milk
2 dried chilies (chopped)
2 tbs. marshmallows
2 tbs. croissant croutons
2 tbs. chocolate flakes

Method:
In a medium size pan place the cream, milk, and dried chili, bring to a gentle simmer and strain. Add the cream to the chocolate and stir until the chocolate melts. Pour soup into bowls and garnish with chocolate flakes, marshmallows and croutons.

There were also Chocolate Pretzels: melt chocolate in a double boiler, dip pretzels, let cool and enjoy!

The choices here were related to the previous sessions discussion on the issues of identity raised by Kurt Vonnegut, and which continued into the next session. Epicac struggles with the knowledge of love and his own reality of being a computer. Reality prevents it/him from fulfilling the desires planted by definition, and the identity created out of that knowledge.

Now, how does identity fit the food choices for this session? It comes down to a question of the identity of flavor. Oh, yes, that certainly sounds like the most B.S. rationale ever, and really just an excuse to make chocolate soup (and as a note, use the seeds of your chilies, adds more flavor). And yet, there's legitimacy: Food is culture- it defines a society with the same power of language. In the modern age, food is more powerful than language: think of any Italian restaurant, French, Indian, Chinese. From personal experience, I'm third-generation Polish, can't speak a word of the language but I can spend hours waxing poetic on the subject of pierogies and kielbasa. As much as it defines our cultures, food has it's own identities: oranges are citrus and sweet, potatoes are starchy, chicken tastes like everything else. So we play with flavor: combine the perceived sweetness of chocolate with the spice of chilies or the salt of pretzels.

Chocolate is a great blender; the sweetness and mildness of the finish product is easily changed: levels of sugar or milk in the process create dark, bittersweet, milk- all the wonderful variants of flavor. That inherent variance in a basic ingredient creates a blank slate to build with. Like so many of the characters we have read about, we are presented with a flexible identity-there's enough to function as a character, but the potential to build allows for the chance to surprise everyone with the end result.