Lines Drawn in Starlight

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?

...except irishninja, unless he's not the one eating 'em: Free Sample of Chocolates.

I think I'm going to post this link at surprise_inside also. Haven't been there in months.

Edit: While I'm posting links, I'll add this one to an article with the oddest tone... Caring for Your Introvert. We are *so* the wrong audience for it.