Chocolate. Ah, what a word. I am in awe before it. What a concept!  If there was ever an Inspirational food, it is chocolate.

Chocolate – from a bean. A bean, brown and from the earth, bitter if unprocessed, but add the unlikely ingredients of sugar from a cane and butter from a cow and out of the earth’s dark mud, humans have invented the food of the gods.

Europeans first tasted chocolate in 1519 when the Aztec emperor Moctezuma greeted Cortés and his army with a drink of chocolatl. Cacao beans were both a valuable commodity, and a major form of currency in the Aztec empire (AD 1376-1520). Those Aztecs knew their stuff! However, long before the Aztec Empire, Mesoamerican lowland civilizations including the Maya (200 BC-AD 1550) raised and traded cacao as a valuable commodity. They knew too.

Today, it’s simply, for me, the ultimate eating experience. I’m drinking it now as I write. Every morning I get up around 4:30 and write this blog. It’s quiet, the phone don’t ring, I am alone to think and drink… my chocolate. I make it from scratch. The anticipation of it awakens me.

Both wife and I keep a mix of bars ready opened on our kitchen counter. We’re into dark chocolate – none of that baby milk chocolate for us. Give me the dark stuff at 64%, smooth, rich and oh so satisfying. We keep trying the new brands, the exotic brands from around the world, but really, for us, it comes down to Lindt. 30 years ago Lindt cree a Berne, [370g bitter sweet chocolate with vanilla, emulsifier added] so overwhelmed me that I bought a foot long bar, framed it in glass and hung it on my kitchen wall right beneath the clock. It hangs there still today.

When dieting, we eat it for dessert – one square to satisfy the longing. We give it for Christmas to all our friends – Link’s Famous Chocolate Sauce Extraordinaire. Secret ingredient: Karo Syrup. Throw it on a little (or a lot) of vanilla Haagen Daz and you’ve got all the sins of the earth in one bowl. Some friends sheepishly admit to us that it never actually makes it to the ice cream – they just eat it out of the jar with a spoon.

We eat it enhanced by almond, by orange, by chili, by vanilla. My wife actually chews it! Horrors! So eager to satisfy her craving. Now me, I melt it between tongue and roof of mouth as slowly as humanly possible savoring the moment, sadly obsessed.

Once, in my wild and crazy youth, I lived in a little carriage house in Greenwich Village that contained a tiny sunken living room. In a financially frivolous moment I bought 100 cans of #10 chocolate syrup and after lining the living room with plastic sheets, filled the room with the chocolate and swam in it.  Pouring it in was a joy. Removing it was not. But who cares? I did it. The carriage house smelled of chocolate for 6 months.

I’m a purist. I’m not into fudge sauce, no, strangely enough for a dark chocolate guy with high priced taste buds, when it comes to vanilla Haagen Daz, if it ain’t Link’s Famous, it’s good ol’ Hershey’s Chocolate Syrup. I know, you’re probably shocked at my low class taste buds in those moments, but really, if you think about it, that’s the beauty of chocolate. It’s so good that even the cheapest and most commercial of the brands works in an ultimate and elegant setting.  Nobody ever turned down Haagen Daz with Hershey’s syrup.

My cup of hot chocolate is now finished; its dregs lay comfortably and soothingly in my stomach. I am at the end of this, my obsession expose. Oh there are many more stories, stories that would thrill you, inspire you, make you blush. But not for tonight. Perhaps another time. And so, I shall return to my warm bed.

But first…

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