On Hot Chocolate and Cold Weather, #2.

In our home, after a day in the snow, that day ended with mom's hot chocolate. Whole milk, cocoa powder, sugar and heat. That's it, but that was enough, because chocolate goes well with a lot of things, and it goes perfectly with milk. The combination of chocolate's bitter sweetness and milk's smooth sweetness blends nicely when warmed, especially on a cold day.

Before I give my mother's short list of ingredients, I should say that there are easy ways to complicate or over-simplify this. You can buy quality chocolate bars, chip them, melt them, mix them with hot water and then milk, or oversimplify and do the microwave thing. The first is too much trouble the second doesn't taste right. Here's what you need:

Fresh whole milk
Chocolate cocoa powder
Sugar
Good, heat conducting pot
Heat

Measurements are more difficult because of taste. My suggestion for the average Hershey's type cocoa powder is a tablespoon of powder and a tablespoon of sugar for every cup of milk. I like one tablespoon, you might like 1.5 or two. The instructions are as easy as the ingredients:

1. Warm milk slowly but steadily until it is very hot but not boiling.
2. Add a little warm milk to the dry ingredients stir until shiny.
3. Add the chocolate mix in the warm milk.

Takes about 5 minutes, but you do have to stand there and stir, almost continuously, until just too hot to drink. Do not boil the milk.

Pour carefully into a warm mug. If you want to top it off with little marshmallows, that's okay, but even better is the old fashioned marshmallow whip -- hey, at this point who's counting calories.

Finally, what I loved in addition to this was buttered toast. Have you ever dipped a piece of crispy buttered toast into a cup of hot chocolate? Low cal it's not but it sure tastes good.

How to Make Old-Fashioned, Oil-Popped Popcorn Properly

After four children and a dozen grandchildren I can honestly say that I have watched every Disney, Pixar, Anne of Green Gables movie ever made . . . many times. Most of them with popcorn. The truth is I volunteered to make the popcorn so that the movie could start and run a while without me. The third viewing of Love Bug in as many weeks is killer.

There's more science to making popcorn than you might think, the kernels need to explode quickly to get that airy and crackly center. After 30 years I consider myself a master.

First, start with a decent quality popcorn. It doesn't have to be a gourmet brand but a good Tom Thumb or Target brand is better than the dollar a bag brand. Next, get a good thick-bottomed pot with a handle. I use normal cooking oil but special popcorn oil supposedly works better. Good idea, I just never do it.

Get the pot warm first and add a 1/4 inch of oil to cover the bottom of the pot. When the oil is hot carefully pour in a layer of kernels to very loosely cover the bottom. Here's the hard part. To get the popcorn done just right you need the kernels hot enough to pop quickly, but not too hot so that they get a kind of of charred taste. I wish I could tell you how to do this but I can't. You just have to do it. One thing you don't want to do is put the kernels in cold oil and slow cook them. They lose too much moisture that way and pop small and dry.

Another tricky part. I use a pot with a lid and as the kernels start to pop I hold the lid just about an 1/8 of an inch off the edge to allow some of the steam to escape. If you don't that steam will soften the popped corn. This is tricky because a little hot oil escapes with the steam. I should say that this is black-belt level popcorning, amateurs should not attempt.

Final tip. After you get a good pop, shake the pot while it is still on the fire. You don't want the kernels to char and you want the unpopped kernels to fall back to the bottom. When the pot is almost filled pull it off the fire, lid on, and let the final kernels pop.

Here is where I try to guess when the last kernel has popped. It gives me something to think about while I wait and it kills a little more time. After the last kernel pops --

Pour into big bowl. Butter, then salt. Fall asleep watching movie.

A Favorite Christmas Dessert.

Is it possible to remember a piece of pie eaten 45 years ago? I think so, I can still remember my grandmother's cheesecake, made and served at Christmas dinner that many years ago.

This was no cream-cheese-with-a-crust pie mind you. This was pie perfection.

My grandmother's ricotta cheese pie was a thing of beauty. Before a knife dented its tender surface it displayed a warm brown-white-yellow patina. The light brown flour pie crust on the side stopped at the cheese top. There was no lip of crust. It was unadorned, otherwise; no fruit or other superfluous decoration. Its place was always at the end of the table, grand-dessert that it was, a kind of diva greeting the diner at the very end as if to say, "I follow no other." There was only one pie. You had better get a slice early.

When you bit into into it you sensed two textures, a thin pie crust with a little crunch and then the ricotta cheese filling which is like the cheese itself but mellowed and sweetened somehow by the cooking. It was firm, not at all runny, and not overly gelatinous. You could see the distinct ricotta texture.

The taste was barely sweet, like the first taste of some beers just hinting at sweetness, with a tiny taste of vanilla, a little more of egg, and the almost nutty flavor of ricotta cheese. Simple and perfect. It was served at room temperature, somehow appropriately.

I look forward to it at this time of year, even knowing that the cheese cake is no longer at the head of the dessert table, but the memory is there, saying maybe that some good things, especially during the Christmas season, can be enjoyed a long time in their remembrance and are better left that way.