Blog Dis
For crying out loud...
2025-12-04
It has begun in earnest. It is well upon us, underneath us, bearing over top, surrounding us all around, from the sides to the tops, from the dregs of the streets, coming into the stores — Christmas marketing, and chocolate season has officially descended. We are now into the month of December, the month of merriment and all things sparkly. I've shored up my defences and hidden my wallet, and my VISA card is locked inside a safe. I venture out of home with a calm demeanor, confident that I'll be able to resist all varieties of chocolate circling my wagons like raging marauders with pointy spears.
Well, this is the fantasy, of course. I'm about as strong as a wet noodle and the minute I walk into a store and smell chocolate, my feet turn into lead and I'm planted in one spot ogling the varieties. It's not easy being a chocolate whore [literally the best version of this word]. Take last week, as one example, I ventured into a natural health food store, where I buy the one and only brand of bagels my body can digest without side effects (Spelt bagels), and lo and behold they had set up a display of multiple varieties of chocolate bars, and it was easily four feet high, from the floor, showcasing large bars of chocolate. The manufacturer is also in alliance with the Rain Forest, and this only adds an element of feel good, knowing that your purchases are helping to support what's important. It doesn't hurt either that their product is incredibly satisfying and super delicious.
I've discussed my predilection for demon chocolate on a number of occasions, freely admitting that I'm weak and vulnerable and that the mere sight of chocolate sends my taste buds into a tail-spin. Generally, I can avoid the aisles and walk past, happy with myself for having resisted. Not last week. I blame the varieties offered in the well-placed display, ahead of the line of persons waiting for their turn at the cash. Bastards! Dark chocolate is bad as it surely is a temptation but to add the element of caramel too? I call this outright cruelty... for crying out loud! One square is never enough. Two squares merely tease. Three squares will satisfy you long enough until it becomes four. I find myself questioning why hadn't I picked up two bars? Why indeed! Good for me that I work out regularly, and for the most part, I still attempt to follow a healthy diet whose score I'd give it an 8 out of 10, which is to say if I eat ten meals, then 8 could be regarded as healthy with 2 falling on that line of moderately off-the-skids.
We all need to live, after all, while we are alive.
George Orwell, an Indian-born British policemen, tramp, dishwasher, Socialist, volunteer in the Spanish war and yes a writer, too, wrote in his polemic novel, 1984 (released in 1948; he had merely transposed the digits in the calendar year to come up with the title, which was a brilliant move) about the worst kind of torture imaginable. The premise was simple: Room 101 was the manifestation of your worst fears, not the ideas of your torturer but what evil your brain could conceive of and endure. For Orwell's protagonist, this worst fear was having his face eaten by rats. Frankly, that kind of demise would rank right up there for me as perhaps one of the worst, maybe second only to being stung to death by Japanese killer hornets. But I submit to you, my wily readers, that another kind of undue stress would be to sit in front of a plate of dark chocolate, hungry, with a wee nip of Irish cream on the rocks by your side, and being denied the right to touch the chocolate. You may only smell it, and then to pretend that the delectable goody wasn't in front of you. Not very nice at all!
However, these are not happy Christmas thoughts, discussing torture and the like, so I shall return to my square of rich dark chocolate, break it apart and watch with wonder as the creamy caramel oozes out and sticks to my fingers. There goes another one.
It's far too rewarding to stick one wedge between my lips to suck it ever so slowly, until the delicious texture of chocolate and caramel co-mingle on my tongue, to awaken my taste buds that don't need to be told what they like. I wish you the same fate.
Well, this is the fantasy, of course. I'm about as strong as a wet noodle and the minute I walk into a store and smell chocolate, my feet turn into lead and I'm planted in one spot ogling the varieties. It's not easy being a chocolate whore [literally the best version of this word]. Take last week, as one example, I ventured into a natural health food store, where I buy the one and only brand of bagels my body can digest without side effects (Spelt bagels), and lo and behold they had set up a display of multiple varieties of chocolate bars, and it was easily four feet high, from the floor, showcasing large bars of chocolate. The manufacturer is also in alliance with the Rain Forest, and this only adds an element of feel good, knowing that your purchases are helping to support what's important. It doesn't hurt either that their product is incredibly satisfying and super delicious.
I've discussed my predilection for demon chocolate on a number of occasions, freely admitting that I'm weak and vulnerable and that the mere sight of chocolate sends my taste buds into a tail-spin. Generally, I can avoid the aisles and walk past, happy with myself for having resisted. Not last week. I blame the varieties offered in the well-placed display, ahead of the line of persons waiting for their turn at the cash. Bastards! Dark chocolate is bad as it surely is a temptation but to add the element of caramel too? I call this outright cruelty... for crying out loud! One square is never enough. Two squares merely tease. Three squares will satisfy you long enough until it becomes four. I find myself questioning why hadn't I picked up two bars? Why indeed! Good for me that I work out regularly, and for the most part, I still attempt to follow a healthy diet whose score I'd give it an 8 out of 10, which is to say if I eat ten meals, then 8 could be regarded as healthy with 2 falling on that line of moderately off-the-skids.
We all need to live, after all, while we are alive.
George Orwell, an Indian-born British policemen, tramp, dishwasher, Socialist, volunteer in the Spanish war and yes a writer, too, wrote in his polemic novel, 1984 (released in 1948; he had merely transposed the digits in the calendar year to come up with the title, which was a brilliant move) about the worst kind of torture imaginable. The premise was simple: Room 101 was the manifestation of your worst fears, not the ideas of your torturer but what evil your brain could conceive of and endure. For Orwell's protagonist, this worst fear was having his face eaten by rats. Frankly, that kind of demise would rank right up there for me as perhaps one of the worst, maybe second only to being stung to death by Japanese killer hornets. But I submit to you, my wily readers, that another kind of undue stress would be to sit in front of a plate of dark chocolate, hungry, with a wee nip of Irish cream on the rocks by your side, and being denied the right to touch the chocolate. You may only smell it, and then to pretend that the delectable goody wasn't in front of you. Not very nice at all!
However, these are not happy Christmas thoughts, discussing torture and the like, so I shall return to my square of rich dark chocolate, break it apart and watch with wonder as the creamy caramel oozes out and sticks to my fingers. There goes another one.
It's far too rewarding to stick one wedge between my lips to suck it ever so slowly, until the delicious texture of chocolate and caramel co-mingle on my tongue, to awaken my taste buds that don't need to be told what they like. I wish you the same fate.
