butterflydreaming (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
butterflydreaming) wrote2006-03-27 05:21 pm
butterflydreaming) wrote2006-03-27 05:21 pm
Entry tags:
mumble mumble Chocolate mumble mumble blather
I keep chocolate in my desk. Right now, there are three kinds: two tiny bars (Cafe Tasse) and one Dagoba. There are bowls of M&Ms and Reese's peanut butter cups in the kitchen, but those are chocolate candy, not to mention full of artificial food coloring and hydrogenated oils. Not food, really. Not chocolate.
Chocolate is a source of iron. Heaven know, we girls need iron. Half of that Dagoba bar is 6% of one's recommended daily iron.
Chocolate is a source of comfort, invoking memories of Easter hunts and other happy times in childhood, memories of sharing after-Valentine's sale truffles with girl friends, memories of a hot beverage by a snapping campfire. For me, add the little cranes I folded out of Halloween chocolate foil wrappers, Christmas chocolate foil wrappers... .
The chocolate of memory always tastes as good as a Cafe Tasse, a Santander, a Venchi, a Flyer. I'm partially glad that my once beloved Cadbury Fruit & Nut is difficult to find, never at the grocery store where I usually shop. My eyes go right past Hershey's. The last time I ate Hershey's, it was waxy and bland. Memory's kisses melt with the sweet smoothness of single-origin fine cacao. Okay, maybe that's pushing it.
I know that I am spoiled for lesser chocolate. I can go slumming sometimes, eat ice cream with candy bars mixed in. I'm a snob. A chocolate snob. Fran's? Generic. Diletante? Too sweet, not enough cocoa mass. Never mind Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory! Godiva? Ah, no.
Americans don't make chocolate. Only the Germans, the Swiss, the Spanish and French seems to know what to do with the product of that vegetable god of the tropics. Americans cut the beautiful stimulant with processed sugar, vegetable and animal fats, and paraffin to make chocolate cheap and accessable. Is that a good thing? Do children need to eat chocolate? How does society benefit from egalitarian cocoa?
If I were Empress, would I horde chocolate in my imperial vaults, to be distributed only to the select few? And without the early addiction to the brain chemical altering goodness of chocolate, would anyone but connoisseurs of rare foods want any?
If chocolate imperiled my life, would I stop eating it? What kind of life would I have, what kind of quality of life would I have without chocolate to eat?
If my religion forbade the consumption of chocolate, would I abandoned my religion? What kind of god would create chocolate but not allow the pleasure of it?
Chocolate is a source of iron. Heaven know, we girls need iron. Half of that Dagoba bar is 6% of one's recommended daily iron.
Chocolate is a source of comfort, invoking memories of Easter hunts and other happy times in childhood, memories of sharing after-Valentine's sale truffles with girl friends, memories of a hot beverage by a snapping campfire. For me, add the little cranes I folded out of Halloween chocolate foil wrappers, Christmas chocolate foil wrappers... .
The chocolate of memory always tastes as good as a Cafe Tasse, a Santander, a Venchi, a Flyer. I'm partially glad that my once beloved Cadbury Fruit & Nut is difficult to find, never at the grocery store where I usually shop. My eyes go right past Hershey's. The last time I ate Hershey's, it was waxy and bland. Memory's kisses melt with the sweet smoothness of single-origin fine cacao. Okay, maybe that's pushing it.
I know that I am spoiled for lesser chocolate. I can go slumming sometimes, eat ice cream with candy bars mixed in. I'm a snob. A chocolate snob. Fran's? Generic. Diletante? Too sweet, not enough cocoa mass. Never mind Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory! Godiva? Ah, no.
Americans don't make chocolate. Only the Germans, the Swiss, the Spanish and French seems to know what to do with the product of that vegetable god of the tropics. Americans cut the beautiful stimulant with processed sugar, vegetable and animal fats, and paraffin to make chocolate cheap and accessable. Is that a good thing? Do children need to eat chocolate? How does society benefit from egalitarian cocoa?
If I were Empress, would I horde chocolate in my imperial vaults, to be distributed only to the select few? And without the early addiction to the brain chemical altering goodness of chocolate, would anyone but connoisseurs of rare foods want any?
If chocolate imperiled my life, would I stop eating it? What kind of life would I have, what kind of quality of life would I have without chocolate to eat?
If my religion forbade the consumption of chocolate, would I abandoned my religion? What kind of god would create chocolate but not allow the pleasure of it?
no subject
I don't know, but have a poem:
her bitter-sweet kiss--
dark seduction, sweetest bliss--
chocolate goddess
Good thing I have a block of top quality bittersweet in my pantry, otherwise I'd have to call you a
mmm... chocolate....
Re: Good thing I have a block of top quality bittersweet in my pantry, otherwise I'd have to call yo
I was banking on you being ever-prepared.
Re: Good thing I have a block of top quality bittersweet in my pantry, otherwise I'd have to call yo
Imagine coming home to have two chocolate burglars passed out on my plush rug, faces and hands covered in melted chocolate, bellies swollen from so much richness.
Re: Good thing I have a block of top quality bittersweet in my pantry, otherwise I'd have to call yo
in my case, the correct spelling is buhrglar, thank yew :-)
That particular spelling had crossed my mind, but...
no subject
Too bad it's also so expensive. :/
Good news and bad news
(Anonymous) 2006-03-28 03:21 am (UTC)(link)no subject
no subject
From the Godiva website (http://www.godiva.be/about/history.asp):
600 - The 'Xocoati'
Chocolate is born in pre-Colombian America. The first traces of the use of cocoa appear from the Mayan civilisation in the seventh century. The Mayans make a religious tonic drink out of cocoa beans which they would christen `chacau haa' or 'Xocoatl.'
1200 - The Tree of Paradise
After the crumbling of the Mayan empire, the Toltecs continue with the cultivation of cocoa under the name of tree of paradise. The beans become a unit of currency in the whole of Central America. The Aztecs also give great importance to cocoa, claiming it gives them their wisdom and strength.
1502 - Silver grows on trees
Christopher Columbus discovers chocolate, but it is the conquistadors who will be the first to be aware of the value of "the silver which grows on trees". In 1513,Hernando de Oviedo y Valdez reports that he has bought a slave for a hundred cocoa beans.
1519 - An amorous conquest
When the conquistador Hernan Cortes lands on the Tabasco coast in April 1519, the Emperor Moctezuma assumes he is the god king Quetzalcoatl whose return by sea is predicted in the legends. He welcomes him, accepts Spanish domination and gives him the cocoa plantations. And introduces him to chocolate, a bitter drink which he is convinced has aphrodisiac properties. Cortes is more seduced by the idea of "growing silver".
If I meant rectangle, I would not have said "square".
I think you need your own "Pedantic and Proud" icon
Re: If I meant rectangle, I would not have said "square".
I prefer Obsessive AND Compulsive
no subject
no subject