Tuesday, April 18, 2006
Addiction
I am an addict.
Its chocolate. Can’t resist it. If deathly ill, and I was told that I would have a few more years if I gave it up, it would be a tough choice. I can’t think when it was last I went a day without the stuff.
I don’t need buckets of it, I’m a gentleman addict. Just a few squares of proper dark melt in your mouth Green and Blacks and I will be happy. Though I do have to say it is my one food that breaks my simple is best rule. I’m quite happy for my chocolate to be adulterated with other things.
I’ve never quite resolved whether I’m blessed or cursed by our local chocolate shop. The owner and I have become friends of sort, if the dealer of your addiction can ever truly be a friend. She looks to indulge a bit herself, so is a dealer through avocation rather than greed for money. The fine fine lady has another friendship with a small chocolatier in Brussels, for which she’s the sole English importer.
Ah, how someday I want her to introduce me to that man, though it’s a topic for which she is unusually cagey. The things that he can do to black gold is astounding. His champagne truffles are to die for, and don’t get me started on his whiskey ones. Mixing those two of my sins together is something I shall never forgive him for. Well… at least until I need my next hit.
It is a small dark ball, clearly hand made. I usually start and just lick it, just a bit. Not enough to melt it in my hands. Propriety demands that one must not go so far as to leave hands or face dirty with one’s addiction. When that starts happening you know its gone too far. No, I just put the tip of my tongue to it, just tempt myself with a small dot of taste.
It gets the juices roiling in my mouth. When I can’t stand it any longer I will take a bite, just half. What first hits is that same dark bitter sweet taste that my tongue just licked off. But then… oh, but then, my tongue gets a starting melt of the inner core. Here is where his genius shows. It dissolves on my tongue, this mix of pure malt and dark gold. Oh, what glory. Sometimes it is so intense as to make me shiver in place. I often have to close my eyes as if in the intensity of the best of orgasms.
When the last bit is melted and gone, and my eyes open again, what sweet agony awaits. There is still another half in my hand. At this point I’m too far gone. No letting it melt slowly, no it has to be popped into the mouth and crushed and gored into a sticky mess of madness. The resultant rolling down my throat in a mix of alchohol and dark glory.
I restrict myself to only two truffles a day if we have them in the house. The agony of denial is good for the soul.
We do keep other chocolates in the house. Mssrs Green and Black have a lot to answer for. There is little of their trade that I won’t consume. No, that’s a lie, there is none of their range I won’t consume. Even their white chocolate, which normally I disdain as a sickly aberration. However my favourite is their cooking chocolate. At 72%, with a higher cocoa butter content than normal it is soft and dark and far to good to go in a cake.
In a pinch I will eat any chocolate, even Cadbury’s. They use vegetable oils instead of cocoa butter you see, so are apostate in my mind. Yet in a moment of desperation, when there is no other choice, I will eat even theirs. I have even sunk to stealing gold foil encased coco coins from my kids sweety box (kept on the top shelf, all sweeties get confiscated, then doled out again slowly) when desperate. I have to have a bit a day you see. It’s a horrible thing.
I am an addict.
Its chocolate. Can’t resist it. If deathly ill, and I was told that I would have a few more years if I gave it up, it would be a tough choice. I can’t think when it was last I went a day without the stuff.
I don’t need buckets of it, I’m a gentleman addict. Just a few squares of proper dark melt in your mouth Green and Blacks and I will be happy. Though I do have to say it is my one food that breaks my simple is best rule. I’m quite happy for my chocolate to be adulterated with other things.
I’ve never quite resolved whether I’m blessed or cursed by our local chocolate shop. The owner and I have become friends of sort, if the dealer of your addiction can ever truly be a friend. She looks to indulge a bit herself, so is a dealer through avocation rather than greed for money. The fine fine lady has another friendship with a small chocolatier in Brussels, for which she’s the sole English importer.
Ah, how someday I want her to introduce me to that man, though it’s a topic for which she is unusually cagey. The things that he can do to black gold is astounding. His champagne truffles are to die for, and don’t get me started on his whiskey ones. Mixing those two of my sins together is something I shall never forgive him for. Well… at least until I need my next hit.
It is a small dark ball, clearly hand made. I usually start and just lick it, just a bit. Not enough to melt it in my hands. Propriety demands that one must not go so far as to leave hands or face dirty with one’s addiction. When that starts happening you know its gone too far. No, I just put the tip of my tongue to it, just tempt myself with a small dot of taste.
It gets the juices roiling in my mouth. When I can’t stand it any longer I will take a bite, just half. What first hits is that same dark bitter sweet taste that my tongue just licked off. But then… oh, but then, my tongue gets a starting melt of the inner core. Here is where his genius shows. It dissolves on my tongue, this mix of pure malt and dark gold. Oh, what glory. Sometimes it is so intense as to make me shiver in place. I often have to close my eyes as if in the intensity of the best of orgasms.
When the last bit is melted and gone, and my eyes open again, what sweet agony awaits. There is still another half in my hand. At this point I’m too far gone. No letting it melt slowly, no it has to be popped into the mouth and crushed and gored into a sticky mess of madness. The resultant rolling down my throat in a mix of alchohol and dark glory.
I restrict myself to only two truffles a day if we have them in the house. The agony of denial is good for the soul.
We do keep other chocolates in the house. Mssrs Green and Black have a lot to answer for. There is little of their trade that I won’t consume. No, that’s a lie, there is none of their range I won’t consume. Even their white chocolate, which normally I disdain as a sickly aberration. However my favourite is their cooking chocolate. At 72%, with a higher cocoa butter content than normal it is soft and dark and far to good to go in a cake.
In a pinch I will eat any chocolate, even Cadbury’s. They use vegetable oils instead of cocoa butter you see, so are apostate in my mind. Yet in a moment of desperation, when there is no other choice, I will eat even theirs. I have even sunk to stealing gold foil encased coco coins from my kids sweety box (kept on the top shelf, all sweeties get confiscated, then doled out again slowly) when desperate. I have to have a bit a day you see. It’s a horrible thing.
I am an addict.
