Ode to Chocolate

I am a choc-o-holic. I love the smell! I love the taste! I love the texture - as long as it's not that waxy chocolate I sometimes run across. If you're unlucky enough to bite into that, you might as well be eating a crayon. (Hmmm, maybe that's why Handsome Boy ate crayons as a toddler...) 

Anyway, this extreme and unapologetic love of all things chocolate is exactly why I do not keep it in my house. If I did, before long I'd have to go out and buy all new (larger) clothes. Since I hate to shop almost as much as I love chocolate, it serves as a natural deterrent. But that doesn't mean I never have it in the house...

At Easter time, one of my favorites comes out: Cadbury Creme Eggs. I usually score a few from the Easter Bunny, and a few more from my parents. Once Easter passes, I can usually find these tasty morsels in the discount aisle at our grocery store. This year, between Easter and April 2, I managed to eat 15 of them. FIFTEEN! In my defense, they only come out once a year, so I gotta partake before they're gone for twelve long months.

A few years ago, right about the time Forrest Gump came out, my mom gave me two whole cookbooks devoted solely to chocolate recipes: candies, pies, cakes, cookies... you name it, and it can probably be found in those two cherished volumes. They have pride of place on my cookbook shelf.

My favorite movie snack is chocolate covered raisins. I get them every time I go, or I smuggle them in and save myself the small fortune they charge for them at the concession stand. My father noticed this particular habit of mine, and so now he gets me a big 'ol bag of them for Christmas every year, and sometimes even for my birthday, too! Once, he even gave me a huge crystal candy dish full to bursting with chocolate covered raisins. God bless 'im!

On the home front, Lovely Girl has wisely learned to hide her chocolate stash from me.  She's pretty good at it, too. I haven't managed to find it, yet, and it's not for lack of trying. (She's a chip off the 'ol chocolate-loving block, that one is...) Today, I tried once again to find her stash. And once again I came up empty-handed, as she smiled smugly at me from her bedroom doorway.

So, unable to satisfy my chocolate cravings tonight, I had to content myself with writing about it. To that end, I found some fun chocolate quotes on the web:

The Problem: How to get 2 pounds of chocolate home from the store in a hot car.

The Solution: Eat it in the parking lot. 

     - Anonymous

          I like the way Anonymous thinks!

My therapist told me the way to achieve true inner peace is to finish what I start. So far today, I have finished 2 bags of M&M's and a chocolate cake. I feel better already. 

     - Dave Barry

          Hmmmm...I gotta get the name of Dave's therapist...

Chocolate is a perfect food, as wholesome as it is delicious, a beneficent restorer of exhausted power...it is the best friend of those engaged in literary pursuits.

     - Baron Justus von Liebig, German chemist (1803-1873)

          Well, there ya go. I write; therefore I crave 

          chocolate. (Or, is it the other way around?)

And now, I will leave you with this well-said tidbit:

If you are not feeling well, if you have not slept, chocolate will revive you. But if you have no chocolate! I think of that again and again! My dear, how will you ever manage? 

     - French writer and lady of fashion, Marquise de Sevigne 

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