Good Morning.
The movie "Chocolat", with delicious characters played by Juliette Binoche, the great Judi Dench, and Johnny Depp, was a huge hit, particularly with women. This is because human beings love chocolate, but men are more likely to eat a big hunk of chocolate cake rather than nibble on the truffles and other works of chocolate art presented in the film. Women go nuts over beautifully decorated confections that might seem inappropriate to a truck driver with a sudden craving. He will swing through Dairy Queen or buy a package of Oreos at a convenience store, although I had a college roommate whose brothers gave her a case, not a box, of Oreos for Christmas one year. She is now a Unitarian minister.
I have a granddaughter who heads for the fridge the minute she walks in the house. If I have a carton of Neapolitan ice cream rather than my usual chocolate, she eats the chocolate section and ignores the other two. I keep a bottle of Creme de Cocoa, considerably less expensive than the Irish liqueur, to throw on the strawberry and vanilla graciously left behind by my grandgirl. If I want a morning treat, I get a Campfire Mocha at a coffee drive-thru and order it with dark chocolate that is supposed to be healthier, but I'm quite certain that chocolate in any form has mental and physical benefits. A hot fudge sundae can fix up a bad day at work in about half a minute; a large bag of M&Ms, kept in the freezer, makes an excellent ice pack for an athletic injury or a lousy old knee as long as an interior designer friend of mine hasn't eaten it first. He likes his chocolate cold enough to crack a tooth.
I was raised on chocolate. I grew up on English toffee that was hidden among the generous folds of lingerie in the closet of my great aunt. Don't tell your parents, she'd say, and I never did. I also, however, gravitated toward a kitchen with brownies, slightly underbaked, and chocolate chip cookies, warm and luscious from the oven. In the summer there were Eskimo Pies; in the winter there was cocoa on the stove with a skin I thought was magical rather than a nuisance. There was chocolate pudding, never instant and also with the skin, upgraded to chocolate mousse when someone was coming for dinner. A trip to the bakery was always to buy eclairs or doughnuts with chocolate frosting, never for cream cheese Danish or cinnamon coffee cake. In more recent times I have experienced the joy of the chocolate fountain, spilling over to eager hands with pound cake and strawberries.
In the movie, a free-spirited woman blows into a French village with her daughter and opens a chocolaterie right in the middle of Lent. She and a friend make unimaginably gorgeous morsels and display them like jewels in the shop window. Up at the local church, the young priest is preaching about self-restraint, but some of the villagers, a bit sheepishly, stop by for a little pick-me-up anyway. The baddie in the movie is not the chocolatier or her Irish paramour who arrives one day on a barge; it's the village mayor, a sanctimonious boor whose wife has, imagine it, left him. He eventually has a breakdown of sorts and winds up collapsed in the window full of chocolate, sick as a dog and loaded with guilt but with a smile on his face. I would tell him to give up eggplant next year, or heavy lifting, even afternoon naps - anything but chocolate.
Best regards,
Elisabeth
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