One of our favorite desserts is also the simplest to make. Combine mixed fruit juices (we use Knudsen’s black cherry and raspberry) or melted sorbet with yogurt, milk or cream.

You can make the soup as rich or as dietetic as you like, by using nonfat dairy products. If you want a thicker consistency, reduce the juice in a saucepan with a cinnamon stick, some lemon and other spices to taste.

Then add chopped seasonal fruits, whole berries, melon balls and/or scoops of ice cream or sorbet for a festive presentation.

The soup in the photo is a watermelon papaya soup.

For more soup recipes, check out the Gourmet Soups And Stocks section of THE NIBBLE webzine.

There’s nothing more refreshing than cold
fruit soup on a warm day. Photo courtesy McCormick.com.

Find recipes for flavored butters and read more butter tips in the Artisanal Butter section on THE NIBBLE online magazine.

Starbucks’ offerings include chocolate bars, tasting squares, truffles and chocolate-covered coffee beans. The chocolate was designed in consultation with The Artisan Confections Company, the subsidiary of The Hershey Company that owns the artisan chocolate brands Dagoba Organic Chocolate, Joseph Schmidt Confections and Scharffen Berger Chocolate Maker.

The chocolate quality is superb—among the best one can find outside a gourmet bar store, and some of the products can compete with most of what is found within those stores. The price is right: 3-ounce bars for $2.99, boxes of tasting squares and Milk Chocolate-Covered Coffee Beans for $4.99 to $5.49 and five flavors of Chocolate Truffles in the same price range.

– The corn planted today in the corn belt is genetically modified for high yields and herbicide tolerance. It’s meant to be made into high fructose corn syrup or livestock feed. It’s not “corn on the cob,” edible by humans. (That’s a different variety.)

– But we all eat it—in the meat that our livestock has been fed with, in the HFCS that’s in our bread products, in the corn oil that the fries are cooked in, and of course, in all that soda.

While the production values of “King Korn” are homespun, the message is not. The corn that pervades our diet—which is killing us through higher rates of obesity and diabetes—is also killing the cattle. You’ll see up-close and personal how cattle that have grazed free range on grass for thousands of years are now feedlot cattle, fed a corn that their digestive system is not evolved to deal with, so that they reach market weight in half the time. If they weren’t slaughtered for beef at 12 to 18 months, they’d be dead in a few months from acidosis caused by their diet. Yes, you’ll never look at a burger the same way, either.

While you’re at it, pick up a copy of Al Gore’s Academy Award-winning film, “An Inconvenient Truth,” about climate change.