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Be Mine: Valentine's Chocolate

We are on the heels of one of the biggest chocolate days of the year and  I have a surprising (perhaps even shocking) admission to make.  

I have never received chocolates for Valentine's Day.  Ever.

There is no question in the minds of anyone who knows me that I am an enthusiastic chocoholic and always have been. It's a no-brainer really. I couldn't be easier to shop for.

But instead, Valentine's for me has always been just about the week after February 14th when all the chocolate goes on clearance sale and I can scoop up copious amounts at bargain prices for myself.  Sad but true.

Should you feel sorry for me?  How has a woman who writes a chocolate blog completely missed ever being gifted Valentine's chocolate?  

It all began with my first boyfriend who was not well-schooled in the fine art of romance. Valentine's Day was either, ahem, accidentally missed or marked with some hastily purchased cinnamon hearts from the local convenience store.  Which is nice.  Nice. He was very nice.

My next boyfriend was decidedly his polar opposite. He was all about grand gestures of amour, complete with candlelight and flowers and corny poetry and over-the-top story book surprises.  The poor guy could have saved himself so much trouble with a small box of truffles.

My university beau once bought me a jumbo package of red Valentine's Day licorice and ate them all himself.  In front of me. It's hard to believe I let that one slip away.

And then that brings us to my dear husband.  My dear, dear husband. But the reality is that I can't place one ounce of chocolate-less blame on him.  It's all my fault.  

When we were first dating, 13 years ago, we were madly in love with harps and cherubs flitting about our heads.  Together we proclaimed that everyday was about expressing our affection for each other and not one commercially-manufactured, retail-manipulated day.  We both agreed to boycott Valentine's day in favour of 365 days of looooove. We were the loving Mc. Loversons and Valentine's gift exchanges were beneath us.  (oh my)

And now 13 years later I am pretty convinced that might have been the worst idea I have ever had. 

So instead I wish YOU a very Happy Valentine's day filled with baskets of chocolate. Someone should be enjoying a sweet-chocolate celebration.  Please have an extra one for me.

xo

Great Mexican Chocolate

I am terrific at going on vacation.  Really. It's a skill that has taken years to master. 

But returning from vacation? Well, that I am not so good at.

So before the post-holiday blues take hold with too menacing a grip, I'll reminisce about my recent 2-week-long sojourn to the Mayan Riviera.  The weather was glorious, the pace was restful and restorative and the reprieve from snow for two blissful weeks was absolutely appreciated.

As we explored the Yucatan Peninsula, there were healthy doses of reading on the beach, shopping for things we didn't need, visiting Mayan ruins, discovering quaint little towns, snorkeling in the sea and swimming with the dolphins. 

We've visited Mexico many times before and seen several different regions because we have family that live there.  Through our travels over the years, I've always been on the quest for great Mexican chocolate. After all, the Mayans and Aztecs claim to have been the first chocolatiers.  The birth place of chocolate must have the best. 

But, I've not yet been blown away.

Other than Mexican hot chocolate, of course.  The wonderful combination of the bitter dark chocolate with the biting spices leaves that warm feeling in my chest just thinking about it.  It's a drink to sip, to savour and it's not for everyone. But I am a fan.

So I couldn't have been more thrilled than to stumble on a brilliant little chocolate cafe in Playa Del Carmen

It had the most delicious Mexican hot chocolate and quickly became my daily haunt.

On our many trips there we tasted their ice cream and brownies and chocolate bars and chocolate nibs and drinking chocolate and, my personal favourite, the chocolate frio ...

I say this (and completely unsolicited and unbiased), Ah Cacao was indeed my happy place.  Everything they made was incredible.  And the wait staff and atmosphere was as charming as the chocolate was tasty.  

The funniest thing was the prominence of this enormous poster in several locations of the cafe with the headline "Chocolate Makes Happier Babies" quoting the British studies that say eating chocolate during pregnancy produces happier infants.  Now, why didn't someone tell me that when I was expecting on my uber-organic, all-healthy pregzilla mission?

Their website says it all though: "According to Aztec legend, chocolate was a gift from Quetzalcoatl, the God, and formed a bridge between heaven and earth. One taste of Ah Cacao Real Chocolate and you will understand why!"

And as I pack away my flip flops and return to reality, I can say that my quest to find great Mexican chocolate was finally realized.

The Truffle Doesn't Fall Far From The Tree

So you may have noticed that I have a sweet tooth.  Shocking, I know.

I fully acknowledge that I have no self control when it comes to chocolate.  Everyone has a price and chocolate just happens to be mine.

That would be all easy peasy except that at the same time as I am unapologetically living life as an active chocoholic, I am trying to raise a seven-year-old to grow up with healthy eating habits.  

It's not like our cupboards are stocked exclusively by Lindt and Godiva. I am a vegetarian who eats mostly organic.  His dad doesn't have even a quiver of cravings for that lovely dessert food group.  We keep lots of healthy snacks and fresh foods in the house and he's grown to be a kid who adores chick peas and spinach and lentils and tofu.

The thing is, he has a sweet tooth. Or if it were my husband writing this, we'd say he has my sweet tooth.  Which essentially means it is ENORMOUS.

He could eat candy 24-7.  It doesn't dampen his appreciation for brussels sprouts cooked in garlic, but if given the choice he'll go for the chocolate box every time.  He asks for a sugary treat a gazillion times a day. He dips into my stash. He is a veritable connoisseur

And so I am faced with a real quandary. His mother writes a chocolate blog and nibbles on dark chocolate while I am making him breakfast. (I can see the finger waggling from the judgey mcjudgersons in unison).  

Do I become one of those parents who is all "do as I say not as I do"? 

Do I stop eating chocolate to set a good example?  Um, ya, like I could ever stick to that resolution.

So I've done the only selfless (heh) thing I could think of and I took all chocolate products out of the house. Every single one was packed up and toted away.  Toted away to my office. Where, incidentally, I have just become the most popular person in the building.  

The first day sans chocolate met with the lip.  You know the lip. The lip all cute kids have perfected. The big pouty lip that turns under at the exact moment that the eyes widen and look up with the most tragic attempt at a plea.  

But there is an outside chance he might not actually be my child after all. Because by day two he was happily eating clementines instead of chocolate orange slices and carrot sticks instead of candy canes.  

And best of all, apparently there is a logical explanation for his superior will power.  He's pretty sure it's because the tooth fairy likely took his sweet tooth away when it wiggled out a few weeks ago.  

She better just keep her hands off of mine.

I'm Dreaming of a Chocolate Christmas

Since I was knee-high to a grasshopper (I've always wanted to say though I don't know why. Do grasshoppers even have knees?  And are there some freakishly large grasshoppers in the jungle that would make this size reference even remotely relevant?). 

Um, let's start this again (you're welcome). 

Since I was a small child, Christmas and chocolate have been inextricably linked. (That's better).

I was born a chocoholic and my mom (and Santa) were sure to fill my stocking with chocolatey treats and wrap a substantial box of chocolates up each year. The highlight of my holiday season for sure.  They were always drug store chocolates - nothing fancy - but as a kid growing up in the country, they were fancy schmancy to me.

For years there were After Eights (which really were not such a kid chocolate). Those little sleeves they were individually packaged in could be found all over the floor of my powder blue girly room for days.

 

I was also terribly fond of Toffifee (and how do you pronounce that?  Looks like Toffee-fee but I always said Toffee-fay.  A quandary of epic proportions to an 11-year-old.)  Though they did have a propensity to stick to your teeth like nothing else, there is no denying that they were deeeeelish.

And of course, what would the holiday season be with out the good ol' staple ... Turtles. "Turtles, turtles, rah, rah, rah.  Turtles, turtles, ha, ha, ha.  Ahhhhh I love turtllllllllessss." 

Yes, I just spontaneously belted out a bad ad jingle from 1980. Because this is where I reveal that as an eight-year-old girl I daydreamed of one day becoming THIS woman:

Sad but true.  Sad but true.

I wonder what chocolate selection my mom Santa will wrap up for me this year? 

Merry Christmas!

Birthday Chocolate

A few days ago it was my birthday.  Not a milestone birthday. Not a fanfare birthday. Not a big-deal birthday.  Yet it still left me feeling more older than wiser which necessitated a trip to the salon for an ill-advised attempt to make at least my hair look younger.  Sigh.

Because my friends and family know me so well, my birthday is always smothered in chocolate. Each gift is accompanied by a requisite chocolatey treat and each celebration's finale has some sort of chocolate decadence involved.  

Growing up I had the same birthday cake each year.  My mother was not much of a baker.  In fact, one of the favourite family tales to retell is her attempt to bake my brother a birthday cake when he turned 6.  She mis-read the recipe and used 2 cups instead of 2 tablespoons of a key ingredient for the icing. Rather than aborting the mission and starting over, she increased the quantities of everything else and ended up with an enormous bowl full of intensely-sweet, bright, bright blue-coloured icing.  Knowing that my father would tease her incessantly, she decided to make it look like she meant to make enough electric blue icing to feed a small village.  So she told him we begged her to make extra and then forced my brother and I sit with a bowl and spoon every day for a week and eat it up after school.  Seriously.  I have had an aversion to blue icing ever since.

From then on though, she never baked another family birthday cake. Instead, as a sort of family tradition, we celebrated each year with this:

Good old McCain Deep n Delicious Chocolate cake.  Mysteriously moist days and days and days after opening, and somehow tastier when eaten without permission at breakfast.  Not gourmet chocolate by any stretch of the imagination, but it is to chocolate what mac & cheese is to pasta ... comfort food.  Even a whiff of it brings back a flood of childhood memories.

It's been years since I've thrust a fork into one of these.   Maybe I need to make this a "birthday week" and give it a go for old times sake.