By Suzanne Waring
I have no willpower when it comes to chocolates. I love all of the different fillings, whether they are rich ganache, velvety caramel, luscious praline, delicious fruit, or crunchy nuts. My mouth waters just thinking about a box full of all of these flavors encased in rich, smooth dark chocolate, milk chocolate, or white chocolate—the type of chocolate doesn’t matter.
Even though we know that no one will Trick or Treat at our house because of our rural setting, we always buy a package of candy for Halloween, and it has to be chocolate, because we eat the whole bag ourselves.
We always receive several boxes of chocolates as Christmas gifts. Because I have no willpower, I ask DH (social media for dear husband or #0*% husband, whichever case it may be) to hide them and dole out the pieces to me a little at a time.
That usually works, but sometimes I go hunting, and I often find at least one of the boxes. This means that I eat the supply, piece by piece or handful by handful, and DH doesn’t get any. I find I can eat them right in front of him, and he doesn’t suspect it, because he thinks they are tucked safely away in his hiding spot.
Using any excuse, I beg DH to bring out the chocolates, and normally he does, but he rations the number of pieces I can have. That means I have to look very carefully over the various chocolates, to determine the flavor I want. It is an ongoing negotiation until all of the chocolates are gone.
To be sure, I’m going to continue supporting people who work in the chocolate industry. The first year DH and I were married, he gave me an iron skillet for Valentine’s Day. I cried, but he learned quickly. Now I get a heart-shaped box of chocolates, and I share a few with him.
When the news broke that dark chocolate was good for a person, I was elated, although I remember the first study came from the chocolate industry, which provided a tiny sense of doubt for me.
Now that other studies by those with no investment in chocolate have had the same results, DH and I have a square of high-percentage chocolate every day at noon. Mmmm good, a great way to top off lunch.
Last fall a group that I belong to needed to borrow a large coffee pot for a meeting. I just happened to have one stored away on a basement shelf. I decided to rinse it out, since we hadn’t used it for a long time. When I pulled out the basket for the coffee grounds, I found a whole bag of Hershey Miniatures in the barrel of the pot.
I have no idea how long the bag had been in there. We must have forgotten about DH hiding it a good six to eight Halloweens ago. I tried a bar, and to my disappointment, I had to throw away the whole bag.
But it gets worse. Just recently DH was looking for some new socks he had stored away on the shelf in his closet. He had to take down everything on the shelf, because he couldn’t find the socks. At the very back, however, he found something else. Yep! A whole cellophane-wrapped box of Russell Stover chocolates.
Oh woe is me! We opened them, but they had turned a whitish-gray color and were hard. We looked at the date on the box. It was 2011.
I’m going to need to quit asking DH to hide chocolates, or we need to move more often, so we can find what he has stashed away. The problem is that we expect to live here for a long time.
Can you imagine what our kids will find when they empty out our house? They will be disappointed, because it won’t be money. MSN
