The Chocolate Lab by Eric Luper

Author:Eric Luper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Scholastic Inc.
Published: 2017-10-19T04:00:00+00:00

I turn the page, then I turn a few more.

“What is it?” Hannah asks, trying to peer over the top of the book.

“Hannah,” I say. “I think our problems are solved.”

“Mom’s family has lived in this house for a billion years,” I say. “This Beatrice Cabot lady must have been our Great-Great-Great-Great-(however-many-times)-grandmother.”

Wearing Mom’s apron, Grandpa looks like a bouquet of flowers, but he doesn’t seem to notice. He places three filled-to-the-brim bowls on the table, one for each of us. Then he places another on the floor for Cocoa. As expected, Hannah wrinkles her nose.

“So all of those old things we found …” Hannah says.

I move my book aside so I won’t drip Bambi juice on it. I flip through a few pages. Great- Great-Great-(however-many-times)-Grandma Cabot kept detailed notes about cooking. She listed recipes and utensils and her favorite ways to keep a fire lit through the winter. She even drew pictures of how to best trap and butcher a rabbit. That last one gets Hannah to wrinkle up her nose more than ever.

The too-incredible-to-be-believed part is that she wrote a whole long section about making chocolate and drew sketches to show each step. “It looks like all that stuff we found is chocolate-making equipment from the old days,” I say.

Grandpa sits down beside me. The ruffles on his apron brush my arm. “Old-time chocolate making,” he says. “Now, that’s something I’d like to see.”

“I’d like to see you wear that apron to the supermarket,” I say.

Hannah giggles and picks through her stew with her spoon. She scoops up a chunk of carrot and nibbles on it. “Is it hard to make chocolate from scratch?” she asks.

“I’m sure it wasn’t easy,” Grandpa says. “Nothing was back then.”

“We should clean off all that stuff and give it a try,” Hannah says. “What ingredients do we need?”

I taste the stew. It’s not bad once you stop thinking about Bambi. I can imagine a Revolutionary War soldier really warming up to a bowl of this stuff after a long day of marching through the snow. “There are a few chocolate recipes in here,” I say. “I’ve never even heard of some of these ingredients.”

Grandpa puts on his glasses and looks at the book. “We can get most of these things at the farmers’ market,” he says. “Not sure about the cocoa beans, though.”

At the sound of his name, Cocoa perks his head up from his bowl. He is doing the exact opposite of Hannah, only eating the meat from his stew. The carrots and peas plunk from his mouth with a flick of his bologna tongue.

I eat another spoonful of the stew when the computer in the family room chimes. Hannah bolts from the table. “That’s Mom and Dad!” she cries out.

I don’t know why she’s in such a rush to video chat with them. I’m sure they’ve already heard the bad news from Miss Meredith.

Hannah flicks on the monitor and sits down. “Mom, Dad!” she says. “You need to come home right away.

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