Julia Child's Mousseline au Chocolat

Chocolate Mayo!!!

To be honest, I wanted to title this "Julia Child's Mayonnaise au Chocolat", but then I thought that I would actually like for people to read the post, so I thought better of it.

However, Mayonnaise au Chocolat is, in fact, one of the three names for this mousse - Fondant au Chocolat being the third, but where's the shock value in fondant? No where, that's where.

There's a celebration underway leading up to the occasion of what would have been Julia Child's 100th birthday, in which a slew of chefs, restaurants, bookstores, food writers, and bloggers are celebrating.

Included in that celebration are weekly posts of recipes from Mastering the Art of French Cooking every week leading up to the big day, August 15.*

Last week's recipe was a rolled omelette, which, truth be told, is one of my great culinary fears, for I have no skill in rolling omelettes. I've committed to trying it just the same, as the beauty of Julia Child's recipe is the clarity in which she describes technique.

The chocolate mousse is no different, with basic, yet important, techniques laid out simply, but I think that my favorite part of the recipe is the subtitle to the three French titles: {Chocolate Mousse -- a cold dessert}.

We take - or at least I take - chocolate mousse for granted, so much so that it's easy to forget that in 1961, when Mastering the Art of French Cooking was released, it was necessary to clarify that this is a cold dessert.

There are many other desserts so described in Mastering the Art of French Cooking. Herewith, I present a small smattering: "Creme Renversee au Caramel {Caramel Custard, Unmolded -- warm or cold}", "Diplomate Pouding de Cabinet {Custard with Glaceed Fruits, Unmolded -- a warm or cold dessert}", "Charlotte Malakoff aux Fraises {Almond Cream with Fresh Strawberries -- a cold dessert}".

I am so totally making the Charlotte Malakoff aux Fraises the minute our strawberries ripen in the garden - everything about the name and the description makes me want to eat it straight away. Charlotte is simply lovely, and a chilled dessert with ladyfingers, almond cream, and strawberries? Sounds like the embodiment of June to me.

But back to the mousse: we're on a bit of an eat-what-you've-got kick here at our house, which at this point means a lot of asparagus from the garden (hallelujah), eggs from the hens, and pasta, rice, or some type of grain that has been languishing in the pantry for months.

Sweets haven't been a big part of the equation, and we're still a couple weeks away from harvesting those strawberries (and, therefore, from making the Charlotte), so imagine my glee when I realized that not only did I  have plenty of eggs with which to make the mousse - obviously, with 11 hens laying one egg per day, but also that I was in possession of a box of well-past the sell-by date semi-sweet chocolate (no matter, it tastes great in the mousse, even 6 months beyond its prime), caster sugar, and a bottle of Cointreau - encased in dust, for who really drinks Cointreau? That bottle was purchased at least 10 years ago, I've used it for truffles at the holidays, and probably a Cosmopolitan or two, and now it serves me well in Mayonnaise au Chocolat preparation. Thank you, dusty Cointreau.

Viola! Fancy French dessert with no (new) expense to me, and only a bit of upper arm pain, as I chose to whip the egg yolks and whites manually. The yolks aren't such a big deal, but getting to stiff peaks with the whites was a challenge that my flabby upper arms did not enjoy, and they used this egg-white beating opportunity to remind me that weight training is probably a good idea - and not just because I'm eating fancy French desserts, either.

Once you've gathered your ingredients, the dish comes together pretty quickly - particularly if you were to use a motorized beater - and with just 2 hours of chilling time, this is a lovely, elegant dessert that could easily be whipped up just before the dinner guests arrive, and served forth just a couple of hours later (alright, maybe 4 or 5 by the time you're done with dinner and chatting) to oohs and ahhs, with whipped cream and berries even. In fact, this chocolate mousse may just replace my make-the-day-before tiramisu as a go-to dinner party dessert.

I'm going to do my best to replicate the way in which the recipe is presented in Mastering the Art of French Cooking, so the ingredients and method will be divvied up into separate processes. I've modified the recipe only slightly with two notes about the chocolate melting, both in parentheses.

Mousseline au Chocolat
{Chocolate Mousse -- a cold dessert}
For about 5 cups serving 6 to 8 people

A 3-quart porcelain or stainless steel mixing bowl
A wire whip or electric beater (use the electric beater!)
4 egg yolks
3/4 cup instant sugar (very finely granulated)
1/4 cup orange liqueur
A pan of not-quite-simmering water (note: you can use this same pan of water to melt the chocolate in the next phase of the recipe)
A basin of cold water

Beat the egg yolks and sugar together until mixture is thick, pale yellow, and falls back upon itself forming a slowly dissolving ribbon. Beat in the orange liqueur. Then set mixing bowl over the not-quite-simmering water and continue beating for 3 to 4 minutes until the mixture is foamy and too hot for your finger. Then beat over cold water for 3 to 4 minutes until the mixture is cool and again forms the ribbon. It will have the consistency of mayonnaise.

6 ounces or squares semi-sweet baking chocolate
4 tablespoons strong coffee
A small saucepan
6 ounces or 1 1/2 sticks softened unsalted butter
Optional: 1/4 cup finely diced, glazed orange peel

(Note: Place the chocolate and coffee together in the saucepan, then) melt chocolate with coffee over hot water. Remove from heat and beat in the butter a bit at a time, to make a smooth cream. Beat the chocolate into the egg yolks and sugar, then beat in the optional orange peel.

4 egg whites
Pinch of salt
1 tablespoon granulated sugar

Beat the egg whites and salt until soft peaks are formed; sprinkle on the sugar and beat until stiff peaks are formed. Stir one fourth of the egg whites into the chocolate mixture. Fold in the rest.

Turn into serving dish, dessert cups, or petits pots. Refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.

Excerpted from Mastering the Art of French Cooking by Julia Child. Copyright © 1961 by Alfred A. Knopf. Reprinted with permission from the publisher Alfred A. Knopf, a division of Random House, Inc.

*If you'd like to join in on the celebration, follow @JC100 or keep an eye on #JC100 on Twitter, or like JC100 on Facebook.

Stupidity in the Garden

when there used to be leeks. and no cat pee.

Normally, I like to think that we have tranquility in the garden, though this is simply a case of choosing what memories one wants to have.

There are rabbits who have outsmarted us, chewing through the ostensibly rabbit-excluding fence that lines the bottom of the more decorative split-rail.

Once the adorable little crop-decimators are spotted within the fence by the humans, they start dancing around, cottontailed rear-ends springing into the air as they try to evade us - quite successfully, actually - have you ever tried to capture a rabbit with only your hands for a trap? That's a sure way to make a fool of yourself, lurching from side to side as the rabbit gleefully jumps. Quite a game that is. Quite a game, indeed.

Eventually, we persevere, locating the rabbit gateway into the garden, then securing it with industrial strength metal twist-ties, which now patch our fence in multiple locations. Summer isn't upon us yet, and the rabbits aren't hellbent on getting into the garden, but once those beds are packed with tasty treats, there's sure to be another spot in the fence to have its turn being patched.

The neighbor's cat has an uncanny way of determining where to relieve herself. Essentially, any newly planted bed is a cat toilet in her eyes. Overturned garden center flats protect the young carrot, beet, and kale seedlings as they emerge from the soil. These plastic barriers were set up a bit too late, as they had already had their inaugural toilet experience, which wasn't very kind to the leeks (oh, geez. how did I miss the opportunity for that pun?!), only half of which remain after the cat used them as a litterbox cover crop.

And, having been planted just this past weekend, and having been promptly peed upon during their first night, so, too, are the tomatoes now protected from the cat by upside-down pots.

like this, only there are tomato plants in the bed, not collards and lettuce seedlings. no rocks yet, either.

Asparagus is early this year, and with the early crop comes the early arrival of asparagus beetles, a fairly smart lot, as far as beetles go, for they register a large shadow looming over them, and dart to the other side of the frond, a beetle-human hide-and-seek that only works out to their advantage when they jump to the ground, and the human feels too lazy to dig in the dirt for them.

It's not clear if the losing outcome for the beetles is so good for the human, though, as my current method of beetle elimination involves one of two options: a.) squashing them against the very frond upon which they hide, or b.) picking them off of the frond, then rolling them around between my forefinger and thumb until they are squashed.

In both approaches, there are beetle guts upon my hands which makes me long for a natural predator who could take care of these asparagus-infesting pests.

If only I had been a touch smarter, and less distracted by pretty objects.

About a month and a half ago, I found this adorable little cocoon in the garden.

and when I found it, it did NOT have that little alien nymph hanging off the side.

"Oh, so pretty," I thought.

This thought was followed by quiet contemplation.

"Hmmmm. I wonnnnder what it is."

Then just a touch more quiet contemplation.

"Oh, well, never mind. I like it, and it's not a wasp nest."

Contemplation time was over. It was time for action.

"I know! I'll bring it into the house where I can look at it on the kitchen window sill any time I like."

And when it is time for action, well, Google search be damned! Let's just place this pretty little, unopened cocoon in the kitchen window, shall we?

Yeah. And then let's wake up one Sunday morning a few weeks later, start preparing our coffee, and look out the window, only to see about 100 pairs of baby praying mantis eyes staring back. Whadda ya say we do that?

"Honey," I called to JR in the living room.

"Yes?"

"Come over here please. You have to see this. I feel like I'm being stared at by a hundred aliens."

Upon assessing the situation, he responded, "Ahhhh, yeah. That's a problem." And then a pointed, "how are you going to get rid of them?"

They were, after all, my problem. So I did the logical thing. I began tripping their little praying mantis nymph bodies off of the glass onto a paper towel, carted them outside on the paper towel ark, pushed the paper towel into a shrub, and tried to assist each one in getting onto a suitable leaf home.

Meantime, JR opened the storm and the screen windows to allow them free passage to the adjacent climbing rose.

The whole get-onto-the-plant thing didn't seem to make a lot of sense to the window-evacuated nymphs - apparently they aren't that bright when they first come out of the ootheca (cocoon my ass! it's an ootheca. just Google it!), kind of like their human captor, only she's had 41 years to figure this stuff out, and they'd only been on the outside for about 10 minutes.

Rather than seeking greener pastures - or greener, thorny shrubs - I counted 26 nymphs on the window exterior, and 32 on the bulkhead, which is directly below the kitchen window, and none, not one praying mantis nymph on the rose bush. Oh, and I looked closely, too, I sure did.

By Monday morning, we were down to 6 indoor praying mantis babies, only one of whom I've accounted for since. For that baby was found lying feet to the sky on the window sill.

I'll have a little service for her soon, and plan to bury her in the asparagus patch, where I hope her tiny corpse's presence will help to deter the asparagus beetles.

For, on that fateful day of discovery, had I only contemplated a little longer, and had I only done a quick search, I might have learned that my ootheca (for I would then have known its proper name) contained a hundred or so very beneficial bug-eating praying manti (is that plural for mantis? It just seems like it should be, and seeing as we know that I don't use The Google very well, I'm just gonna go with it.).

Oh, if only I had done those two little things, perhaps my fingers wouldn't be stained with both tick and asparagus beetle blood.

*note: lady beetle larvae and a tiny little wasp will also help me with asparagus beetle slaughter, which is nice, because I practice ladybug husbandry when they infest the house, so their survival is guaranteed, and I'm not about to bring a wasps' nest into the house, as we've discussed above, so they should be safely looking for asparagus beetle prey outside. Hopefully they're doing that now.

Latest Obsession: Ticks, and the Destruction Thereof

The garden is a lovely place to relax, do a little bit of weeding, and find 3 ticks per half-hour walking up your legs. They are also partial to setting up camp on this orange watering can, which is handy, for they are easily drowned once there.

Yep. Ticks. And the destruction thereof. They (and it - the annihilating) are so much my latest obsession that I spent from 3:48am until 5:33am* Saturday morning thinking about how I would tell you all about it, this obsession of mine. For I do quite obsessively despise ticks.

This morning, I have already slayed 3 ticks, and two are crawling around on the door to my office out here in the barn. I'm letting them live, for I hope to have a photo of a tick for this post - because isn't that what everyone wants to see on a food blog? A picture of a tick? Of course it is.

there you have it. a picture of a tick. this one is no longer with us, in case you're wondering. that brings today's slay tally to four.

Generally, each night a bed-visiting tick graces us with its presence. Fortunately, last night, I found the tick before we went to bed, which was a nice change, because last Thursday, I awoke with a start a little after midnight, rolled out of my usual side-sleep position, and just as my lashes unhinged from themselves, my left hand reflexively reached up to my right arm, which was outstretched over my head, and snagged a deer tick crawling along my elbow.

I pinched the tick between thumb and forefinger, climbed out of bed - I actually have to climb, or as we call it "worm" out of bed as our house is quite tiny, and our bed is pushed up against the intersection of wall and eave, hence, JR's side is the only route out of the bed. Once I had successfully wormed out of bed, I brought the offending blood sucker to the Chamber of Death. Which you may know by its more common name: the bathroom.

You see, when you place a tick on porcelain - or any other hard surface, really - it is so, so much easier to pop their little fang-filled heads off with your fingernail. Tile works particularly well, so does the counter area attached to our charcoal grill, though the wood of our Adirondack chairs is not an ideal killing surface due to the grain in the wood, which is unfortunate, given that ticks harass and taunt me in the garden each and every time I enter its gates.

But it is in the middle of the night that they cause the most anxiety. And why wouldn't they? While we sleep, we're utterly defenseless against biting bugs. Nice of me to remind you, I know.

I feel uniquely qualified to point out this disturbing fact, as I have a long history as a bug magnet. Spiders bite me while I sleep, leaving big, itchy, red marks; mosquitoes sneak into the house by night on our dog's back, then buzz around my head at 2am all summer long, and they do not forget to bite me, oh no, they do not.

The mere thought of ticks walking all over me under the cover of darkness makes them that much more menacing. And sleep disrupting.

When I was five years old, I had a teddy bear, a Boston Bruins mascot whom I had named Bruin Bear. Only later in life - like, fourth grade -  did I learn, much to my chagrin, that I had essentially named my bear Bear Bear, which caused great distress, but not nearly as much distress as the episode I am about to describe.

My parents wanted desperately to wean me off of sleeping with Bruin, so they introduced Mr. Mirror, a blue hand mirror whose reflection on the ceiling was meant to preoccupy me. And it did, until that summer night that I felt compelled to scratch my scalp, and got my index finger lodged under something that flapped.

My head was ripping off, I was sure of it. You can probably imagine how a 5 year old would react to this, right? Please multiply the noise of any 5 year old you know, and have heard screaming in horror, by 100. That was my reaction, which also involved describing - between shrieks and sobs - how my scalp was ripping off and was exposing my skull (thank goodness I'm so much less dramatic now. Ahem.).

When my parents arrived at my bedside, terrified looks upon both of their faces, they found an engorged, gray tick stuck to my head. Showing it to me did nothing to console me. Quite the opposite, in fact. I had learned that there were things out there in the world that wanted to suck my blood, and I swore an eternal oath of hatred and revenge. (Do you hear that, ticks? Hatred and revenge!)

I also started sleeping with Bruin Bear again, which I suppose could be considered an upside to the tick incident. (for the record, I still have Bruin Bear. He lives in the closet of our guest room, just in case I need him. Which may happen. Like later this week, when I find my scalp tearing off again.)

In second grade, when teachers could still smoke in school (after the Industrial Revolution but before the advent of the interwebs), I found a tick crawling on my arm, which resulted in a slightly less horrifying yelp than the scalp-coming-loose incident had, after which, my heroic teacher, Mr. Legg, placed the tick into his ashtray and burned the little effer up. Whew.

Even though we live in a relatively rural area, watch deer grazing quite nearby on our neighbor's alfalfa field (and infer that there are hundreds - nay, thousands of Lyme Disease-carrying ticks piled upon their backs), and spend much of our time outdoors in the warmer weather, ticks and I had pretty much managed to keep our distance from one another from that time in Mr. Legg's class until now.

Oh no, you see, this year, I find ticks walking on my legs while I eat lunch. I find them on the bathroom floor, the kitchen ceiling.

Okay, I've only found one on the ceiling, but I'm convinced that that one was actually consciously trying to jump onto JR's head (for the purpose of sucking his blood, of course) as he walked from the living room to the kitchen. No amount of logical talk will convince me that it just fell from the ceiling.

Thankfully, and just in the nick of time, I shrieked, "Look out! TIIIIIICK!!!," my voice distorted in super-slo-mo fashion, as though we were in an episode of NCIS, and everyone watching knows that the bomb is about to go off, only LL Cool J and Chris O'Donnell don't, so those two braniacs in the master control room have to yell into their in-ear headsets, "BOMB!!!"

So it was just like it happens on tv, only it happened here in our kitchen: my tick-evading hero bobbed and weaved just in time for the tick to narrowly miss its target. The tick hit the floor, and JR gasped, "How did you even see that?"

I didn't want to brag, but, really, it's like I have tick-spotting super powers.

In the end, that tick's fate was the NCIS equivalent of being carted off to Guantanamo. It had its little tick head removed. By who? Yeah, that's right. By me. In the Chamber of Death.

On Easter, while enjoying time with family, and ever so shortly after finishing my plate of tiramisu, I looked down to find a tick on my spoon. A tick? On my dessert spoon? They're clearly just mocking me now.

Oh, but who has the last laugh? Well, in the case of each individual tick that I spot with my super powers, they are not the last ones laughing. Provided, of course, that ticks have the capacity to understand humor, and that they can get a guffaw out of those fangs of theirs.

In the overall scheme of things, in the case of what's actually important, like human and canine health, those nasty bugs do seem to be having the last laugh. We're treating our poor elderly Golden Retriever for Lyme Disease for the second time in 6 months. Even with a K9 Advantix bath, I'm pulling ticks off of her face daily (it has worked wonders on the rest of her body, but her face is still an acceptable target for the parasites). Our neighbor had Lyme Disease last year and successfully treated it, but only after going undiagnosed for a month and feeling achy and flu-like for most of that time, so when I kill at least one deer tick and 3 or 4 wood ticks per day, I am, understandably, a little bit skittish about them latching on.

So back to Saturday night (remember that? yeah, that's where this all started): I awakened rather abruptly, sensing multiple ticks crawling on me. One was a hair, two were not identified, though I did flail uncontrollably in an attempt to launch any real or perceived ticks from my limbs.

"Honey," I whispered - oh, hell, who am I kidding? I said as loud as I could possibly say it, "HONEY!?!"

"Mmmmmph."

"JR?"

"Mmmmmmph."

"In the morning, I'm going to need you to check my scalp for ticks, okay? I think I might have a tick in my hair."

"Mm-hmmph."

He wasn't taking this nearly as seriously as I thought he should. I laid still for another couple of minutes. Then I started the worm-out-of-bed process, and announced, "I have to go start this whole going to bed thing over." At 3:38am. So thank goodness I'm not nearly as dramatic as I was when I was younger and that I'm not compulsive in the least. Yes, goodness, I thank you.

And so I began the go-to-bed ritual, which is not dissimilar from the wake-up ritual: wash face, brush teeth, comb hair.

However, in this mulligan go-to-bed sequence, the hair combing was quite rough, and was focused upon the scalp area where the tick was suspected to have taken up residence.

Once I had nearly bloodied my scalp from overzealous combing, any hair that hadn't been pulled out by said aggressive combing was put up in a bun-like labyrinth - you may be thinking labyrinth-like bun would be the more correct English usage, but if you were a tick, you would think it more a labyrinth than a bun. You know, with your hypothetical tick powers of conceptual thinking. So bun-like labyrinth it is.

The goal, of course, was (and is) to keep the ticks out of my hair, so that if there was one already dug into my scalp, others did not join in on the fun. For that is what they do. If one latches onto our dog in a particular spot, two others try to piggyback on that spot. If you haven't witnessed this yourself, it is just as disgusting as it sounds, I assure you.

I returned to the bed and announced, "This is a bug-free zone. This is a bug-free zone. This is a bug-free zone." Three times, loudly, and with authority, a technique from the !Kung! tribe that I learned about in college. They use this technique for divorce, which seemed appropriate, as I would like to divorce our entire home from the ticks, but if that isn't possible, it would be nice to at least divorce our bedroom from them.

When a !Kung! marriage is coming to an end, the divorce-initiator takes the spouse's belongings, piles them outside the door of their home, and announces, "I divorce you. I divorce you. I divorce you." There. Done.

It succeeded somewhat, at least for the immediate term. So thank you !Kung! tribespeople.

Not a single bug,  nor even a phantom bug, crawled on my person the rest of the night. My body was bug free. However, the same could not be said for my obsessive brain, for the mere thought of them caused me to lay awake for the rest of the night, ruminating over how much, how truly, madly, deeply, I revile their little blood-meal having, thousands-of-eggs laying ways.

After thinking about it at great length - you know, obsessively - I'm thinking that this method would work better if I could find tick belongings to pile up outside our doors. Perhaps I'll start saving those decapitated remains from the Chamber of Death, bag those up, and leave use those as surrogate belongings. Hmmmmm. That could work. I'll keep you posted.

*I know that it was 5:33am that I stopped thinking about it, because that's the time that I woke JR up and said,"What the frick is that noise? Is someone getting into your truck?" Oh, but they weren't getting into his truck, they were just chatting it up while dumping their garbage in the wooded area in front of our neighbor's house. This may be a future obsession: figuring out why people come to rural towns to dump their trash, tvs, arm chairs, et cetera, rather than disposing of them properly.

Orzo Salad with Asparagus, Peas, and Toasted Almonds

Oh, but that isn't all that there is to this orzo salad. No. No it isn't. There's also orange zest and freshly squeezed orange juice in there, as well as goat cheese. Mint, too, if you'd like.

This is one of those dishes that serves a number of purposes. For Easter, we needed a substantial vegan side. Sans cheese and with the inclusion of a couple tablespoons of mint, this did the trick.

On nights spent working late in the yard - or, heck, spent working late in general - it's an easy make-ahead side. If you happen to eat it while it's still warm, it's delightful, yet it's still delish when chilled or at room temperature. Don't like goat cheese? Use feta instead, or ditch the cheese entirely.  Want a more substantial one-bowl meal? Add grilled chicken or shrimp.

If you're headed to a party, make a full batch, and serve 8 to 10 people easily. For a family dinner, a half-portion easily serves 4, very likely with leftovers for tomorrow's lunch. Oh, and it's one of those dishes that by the time the pasta is done cooking, everything else is ready to go, so it's a 30-minute or less recipe, too.

Versatility, thy name is Orzo Salad with Asparagus, Peas, and Toasted Almonds.

Party-size preparation:

1 pound orzo

1 pound asparagus, tough bottom portions snapped off, stalks sliced crosswise into 1/2-inch pieces

2 cups fresh peas (from 2 pounds peas in their shells), or thawed peas if using frozen (see note below if using frozen peas)

1/4 cup extra virgin olive oil

the zest and juice of 2 medium (8 ounce) navel oranges

4 ounces goat cheese

8 ounces slivered almonds, toasted to golden brown (10-12 minutes at 350 degrees Fahrenheit)

kosher salt

freshly ground black pepper

You see how easily this can be halved, right? Super-simple math.

Cook the orzo in a large stockpot of salted water according to the manufacturer's directions.

Meanwhile, while the pasta cooks, toast the almonds (helpful economy-of-time hint).

Two minutes before the pasta cooking time has come to its end, add the asparagus and fresh peas to the pasta pot in order to blanch them.

Pour the orzo, asparagus, and peas into a large colander, and allow the cooking water to drain completely. Rinse the pasta and veggies with cool water to stop the cooking process if you're not planning to serve the salad immediately.

Transfer the orzo, asparagus, and peas into a large serving bowl, pour in the olive oil, then stir well to distribute the oil evenly, which will help to prevent the orzo from clumping.

Add the orange zest and juice, then add the cheese and stir well. Season with salt and pepper, toss in the toasted almonds, and serve the salad forth.

Note on peas: If using frozen peas, place the defrosted peas in the bottom of a large colander while the pasta cooks. When you will pour the orzo and blanched asparagus into the colander, the peas will be warmed - or, if not thoroughly defrosted, they will then be devoid of freeze.

Note on serving this dish at room temperature or chilled: If you're not planning to serve the salad immediately, store the toasted almonds in a separate air-tight container, then add them once you're ready to serve in order to keep the almonds crunchy.

Estimated cost for one big batch of orzo salad: $17.52 for a minimum of 8 servings, or $2.19 per serving, or a total of $8.76 for 4 hefty servings if you're making half of the party-sized portion.

Orzo can be had for $1.00 per box in those 10 for $10 deals, but if you've missed out on that sale, Whole Foods Market store brand orzo costs $1.99. A pound of asparagus costs $3.99 in the supermarket now. Peas should cost no more than $3.00 (2 pounds of fresh peas in their pods will yield approximately 2 cups shelled, and frozen peas cost $2.39 for 3 cups). Olive oil costs have dropped - possibly the only thing in the shopping cart that is less expensive than at this time last year - as Whole Foods Market 365 Everyday Value blend has decreased in price from $7.99 to $5.99 for 67 tablespoons, or 9-cents per tablespoon for a total of 36-cents in this dish. Navel oranges are no more than $1.00 per pound (I bought a 4 pound bag of oranges for $2.99, which comes to 75-cents for the two 8-ounce oranges). Almonds cost $3.19 for 8 ounces, goat cheese is $3.99 for 4 ounces. If you use mint instead of cheese, it drops the total cost by $2.99, and if you add mint into the mix and include the cheese, it adds $1.00 to the overall total, or 12 and a half cents per serving more for 8 servings.