Triple Chocolate Mousse.

And by "triple", I mean three days in a row.Does this look familiar? We decided to go "simple and elegant" with the mousse today, garnishing with white chocolate and strawberry halves.

Andy plated his cookies, commenting that his Danish relatives would be pleased with the results of his efforts. His mom is in town; he took her to lunch at the Careme Room yesterday, and Chef Glen saw them eating and comp'd their lunch. They skipped dessert, though. Perhaps it's like sausage-making -- once you've seen it done, you're not so sure you want to eat it.

I again spent the morning getting ready to plate desserts. Not that there was much to prep for the mousse. I sliced a banana-pecan cheesecake that somebody else made earlier in the week, and pondered possible garnishes. Chef Lorriann suggested a tuile cookie of some kind. "Make a stencil," she said. "It will make you happy."

At her suggestion, I cut a rectangular piece from the side of a clean half-gallon cream carton -- a great stencil material because it's pretty thick, plus it's wax-coated and relatively durable. I sketched an abstract palm tree shape and started to cut the inside portion out, using my kitchen shears. The starter hole was the hardest part, and I was just thinking that I should use a different tool to make my initial puncture when the point of the scissor went through the paperboard and through the skin of my left index finger. I tagged it good, and it bled freely.

Chef Lorriann helped me clean and bandage it tightly, and sat me down on a chair with a glass of water and my finger up in the air. She phoned Executive Chef Weller and asked him to drop by, based on the amount of blood I had leaked, which was strictly a CYA move on her part. He strolled in a couple of minutes later and I told him that I'd live. "Was it a serrated knife?" he asked. "No, it was a pair of scissors," I replied. "Oh, don't tell anybody that," he suggested.