I resolve to: lose 20 pounds, clean out my entire closet and write a book. I’ll learn to knit, start exercising and make a plan to clean the garage. I will come to a complete stop at each, and every stop sign, and will yield to the other drivers even though they’ve committed an illegal move in front of me. I will not open my window and yell something that the other driver can’t hear. I will continue to wave at vehicles while walking the dog even if I can’t see if there’s a driver through the dark tinted window. I realize they sometimes don’t want to see me either. By the middle of January, I shall commit these resolutions to the dustbin of a history littered with unresolved resolutions.
Let’s approach the real reason for this article. Chocolate! If you have completed your ‘eating tour’ through all the chocolate treats you have received this past holiday, do not despair! As soon as the 50% off chocolate is gone from that shopping cart at the end cap in Milam’s, rest assured that a delivery of Valentine’s Day chocolate will soon be here. Do we yearn for the blood sugar levels to go down? Not if there’s some excellent dark chocolate on our horizon! BTW, dark chocolate, according to some scientific studies, is good for the heart!
I have realized that ‘left over’ chocolate or ‘emergency chocolate’, (the last half of a bitten, almost hidden chunk which has survived through three holidays, from the back of the vegetable refrigerator tray) is not the same as a fresh newly unwrapped morsel of Ferrero Rocher or anything from the Godiva collections. In these uncertain times we rely on that taste to assuage any guilt from not following any new year’s resolutions. (First paragraph)
We realize a major holiday is on the horizon when the chocolate displays overtake the entrance-way luring us from the ordinary basic food groups. This includes Girl Scout cookie displays (As delicious as they are) with neighborhood scouting families getting first crack at your wallet’s sweet tooth as you enter. (Really, who can resist?)
Valentine’s Day is a day to celebrate the fact that it has been 6 or 7 weeks since your holiday spending spree and since those bills aren’t due until spring of 2028, you’ve saved enough money to splurge on your next chocolate. The good news is that the chocolate cartel has not caught up to the rose and greeting card cartel in terms of exorbitant cost, so we can breathe easy.
We’ve been adding chocolate to everything we can eat or drink. It’s our ‘go to’ treat. Scientists say that our craving for chocolates is more about dealing with stress in a culturally accepted and delicious way, but if that were the case would we have depleted the earth’s supply of cacao just on traffic issues alone?
How did these cravings start? The first modern chocolate bar is credited to a British chocolatier, Joseph Fry, who in 1847 discovered that he could make a mold-able chocolate paste by adding melted cacao butter back into Dutch cocoa. It was the first chocolate bar. He didn’t leave his kitchen for 12 years and set a world record for weight gain. Chocolate became a ubiquitous part of our diet and generally, the sale of gruel as a staple went, so to speak, into the crapper. 20 years hence, Cadbury was selling chocolate candies in England which co-incidentally echoed a rise in British dentistry. We’ve been gorging ourselves on chocolate treats ever since.
A plateau was reached about ten years ago when we consumed more chocolate than we could produce as chocoholics consumed roughly 70,000 metric tons more cocoa prompting the world’s largest chocolate makers to predict a GLOBAL CHOCOLATE SHORTAGE!!!!! Did they collude to raise their bottom line while our bottom got bigger?
Are we eating too much of this luscious treat? A chocoholic will say a resounding “No” even as they consume the remains of last year’s de-eared chocolate bunny which has been unceremoniously stripped of its remaining limbs, which is a perfectly natural desire…..in the middle of the night…..standing there in your underwear…….with the refrigerator door propped open. (Sorry I painted that picture, but some of you know it’s true) Oh well, we can always look forward to next year’s resolutions!
