Sadly, tomorrow they fly to Texas, where I gather rain is a less common occurence.

Actually they're predicting some nasty storms for this weekend in North Texas and that May will be full of bad weather. It does rain in certain seasons, and when it does it often causes major issues. It's probably different near the coast.

Passion fruit mousse with whipped cream and a sprig of mint in chocolate shells at the Cascades restaurant in Nashville.

This? Sounds divine. But I'm a sucker for fruity desserts, especially if they're combined with chocolate. I wish my mom still had her recipe for apple kuchen, which was basically apple crisp with a thick buttery cream topping. Yummmm.

I do like fondue desserts, with fruit and cheesecake and brownie bites to dip into the chocolate. I was at a chain fondue place (Something Pot, can't remember the first word) in Seattle, and we had both Turtle Fondue and Yin Yang Fondue, which was both dark and white chocolate in the same pot laid out in the yin-yang design.

Oh, god, apple kuchen. I need to write home for our peach kuchen recipe. That was some good food.

When you get it, could you share?

Kathy, you are thinking of the Melting Pot. They have restaurants in a few cities - lots of fun, I think.

Absolutely, Kathy. It was from some dinky Sainsbury's cookbook, and just great. I hope mother still has it.

That's it--I had Stock Pot on the brain, and I knew that wasn't right.

I did have a really good raspberry sorbet the one time I went to a top-notch steakhouse in the Chicago 'burbs. I still mean to take my dad to either Gibson's or Gene and Georgetti's downtown sometime this summer--it'll cost a bit, but we both loves the red meat, and I've been promising him for a year or so. This time, I'll have enough money (the other time, I only had $120, and it wasn't enough for the two of us--Dad had to make up the rest).

There's at least one in Chicago, Kathy. IJS.

Pre-zactly. Chocolate mousse in a pie shell, with whipped cream. No spiders.

That's french silk to me.

Also, yum. I'm not a fan of the Boston Cream.

All tiramisu: oh so awesome. Best tiramisu, made from scratch by the wife of a teeny-tiny storefront mostly-organic coffeehouse the size of a postage stamp (the coffeehouse; the tiramisu was not only not the size of a postage stamp, it was in a loaflike pan as long as my arm -- for a party, not just me) at 18th and Balboa in San Francisco. Many years ago. Probably no longer there.

Like ita, I have no one single favorite. Just lots and lots of fond memories:

A single perfect petit four with a very, very thin layer of extremely almondy marzipan on top
A gross and vulgar but utterly delicious grasshopper pie made with lots of fresh whipped cream and what tasted like an entire bottle of creme de menthe
Trader Joe's praline pecans
Vanilla creme caramel with flecks of vanilla bean and a gorgeous cracked sugar crust on top
Bread pudding souffle with bourbon sauce at Commander's Palace

and so on and so forth. I don't play favorites. It's just not fair to them all.

Possibly. Boston Cream Pie for me is whipped cream over a light, fluffy aeriation of chocolate. It weighs nothing, and has every superlative of taste.

That's not Boston Cream Pie at all. Boston cream pie isn't pie at all, for that matter.