February, the month of love.

Ah February, the shortest and often the coldest month of the year. I love February for the skiing, for rib-sticking hot food and wearing tall boots with my skirts and dresses.  Sitting with my kids while I enjoy a mocha drink and them their hot chocolates is a perfect activity during this cold winter month.

This is also the month that advertisers suddenly are reminded that they have a heart and want to share it with you. The ads will be heart-warming; the colors of red and pink will be seen everywhere and the words love, forever, roses, diamonds and chocolates will weave a haze of happiness so thick, you may be glad to see the end of the month. It is not that I don't enjoy Valentines, but sometimes it takes on a quality of consumerism that feels tacky.

I have done some light reading as to why chocolates, diamonds and the rest are ubiquitous to February 14th, or Valentines Day, often causing much surprise and heart ache each and every year in every culture that celebrates it.  The answer seems to be lost in myth but the idea of giving a gift or poem appears to be one of shrewd marketing.  At first this seems a bit depressing, at least to me, when you suddenly discover that you are but a lemming by nature and following the whims of a good marketer, but think again.  How many ideas exist that become annual celebrations, that inspire people to reach out and take a risk giving away chocolates, diamonds and the red heart shaped cards on one day a year?  Not many. Will we see the iPad seven centuries from today?  It is highly unlikely.  And how many of us celebrate Grandparents day?  Yes, there is a day for that, and I love my grandparents but I have never celebrated this day.  Have you? After all, we celebrate Valentines Day which includes every family member you can find.

So it was a brilliant marketing idea. It was created on our own need to share for one day out of the year, your feelings for someone else.  So upon reflection, Valentines Day and celebrations like it ( for some reason I can only think of  the Super Bowl as an example) share this desire to connect that is well outside of the marketing hype. Valentines Day, in spite of its over-the-top commercialism, is a day created by you and me.

So treat yourself and others too, to chocolates, or wine in paper cups on a bench overlooking the ocean, or a diamond for yourself, because you have to show yourself the love too.  Happy Valentines Day.

Happy New Year to all,

And welcome to 2012.  Since 2007, my life and those connected to me have endured loss, even heartbreaking loss, celebrated joys, and discovered that life takes on a crooked path. There were times when, upon awaking, that I wanted everything to be different, and there were times when I went to sleep glad to have seen the day.

This year may or may not bring prosperity to those who find themselves in dire straits; it may or may not bring about great changes in politics or global anything. Someone will wake up to do harm, another will arise to save a life, and another just manage to survive; and, upon and within that crooked path I am on,  I will probably be on a first name basis with at least one or all of these people.

I am resolute that this year I will make every effort to wake up and hold love close to my heart.  I believe this step will help me in 2012. It will remind me to help those who are in need, knowing that paths take on trouble and strife in all walks of life; it will be that one thing which will keep me strong in my faith of a higher power, the worth of my family and the worth of all human beings; it may keep me sane when I feel as if I am talking on a different radio frequency than everyone else.  When I succeed in doing this and can hold love in my heart, I will see my children burn with a brighter energy and people around me respond with more ease and lightness. I will be more able to deal with the crooked path of life and more capable of forgiving myself of my own stupidity.

Luckily for me, I have more chocolate tiles to make and create. Holding love close to my heart while I  create something that gives a moment of happiness to others, well, I am sure that this resolution  may be the secret ingredient to all good things in life (oops, I guess that is like giving away a trade secret if it makes my chocolate taste delicious). So, from my house to yours, I give you my trade secret for 2012.  

It has been awhile since I have had time to write a post.  With my family's busy summer and the new transitions for my children with school, the days have flown past me and now suddenly we are in December.

 

One important event for me was getting my first, and hopefully last, crown.  The hardest part was receiving the injection to numb my entire mouth; the shot was very painful, even with my dentist's  careful ministrations.  When the numbness went away a few hours later, I was left with a curious sensation on the surface of my tongue and alarmingly, the lack of taste.  The sensation died down but did not entirely subside and my taste buds seemed traumatized.  I assumed it would be fine with time and forgot to mention it to my dentist when he went in to numb me again to fit the crown.  This time, when the numbness subsided, I noticed the same curious sensation similar to eating a "hot" candy or eating a jalapeno; a burning that seemed to swell each taste bud and that seemed to move across and under the front area of my tongue.  And at that moment in time, I could not taste anything at all.

 I did and do find this alarming.  Luckily, I am an experienced cook and can add ingredients based on years and years of cooking with ratios. All of my chocolate blends are written down which means that I all I  have to do is follow a recipe, my own; however, during the conching process, I taste the chocolate after 24 hours on a timeline which includes a period of time that I must conduct a taste test as often as every thirty minutes until I feel that the balance of chocolate flavors feel right to me; a process that can take up to three days.  Not being able to taste, in a balanced way,  has stopped me from making chocolate for a few months now. As time has passed, my ability to taste has returned, slowly and with a curious unevenness i.e. for about a month I was deeply aware of sugar.  Any sugar in a food or drink product registered on my taste buds as sickeningly sweet.  I almost could not eat, the sweet flavor was so strong.  I was able to eat bitter chocolate and even then was aware of a sweetness that was almost unbearable and the awareness of sweetness would last for hours.  

Which, of course, leads me to think about flavors in chocolate, the balancing of flavors in chocolate and how important it is to remember that at any given time, a person may experience flavor that disappoints during one taste test and then, taste it again, months or days later and find that they LOVE it.  I can taste again, and for this I am extremely thankful,   and will be getting back to doing what I so enjoy doing, making chocolate, eating chocolate, and sharing chocolate.

May your holidays be filled with a sense of hope, joy and chocolate

Home from Paris.

I have returned home from a seven day vacation in Paris, France, relaxed and feeling rejuvenated.  I enjoy New York City, its never-ending wakefulness, a city that is always looking at itself in a mirror and a city, that for me, boredom does not exist.  I enjoy Copenhagen for its modern flair of art and light, how often the people laugh; and I love Sweden for the walking paths that connect the entire country; but it is time spent in Paris that I arrive back to my home rejuvenated, rested in body and soul, coming home ready to begin my real life and bringing some of my experience of Paris back home.

Paris is designed to stroll through its avenues and parks, causing tourists to slow down often without consciousness.  Comparing the noise level in New York City to Paris, shows Paris to be a remarkably quiet city.  It is not quite like the cities in Denmark and Sweden.  No, these cities do not have the sheer number of tourists.  It is in Paris that the French people speak in normal tones in the parks or restaurants or the Metro, making one aware of your own voice and even the tourists drop into normal tones during their stay. 

Alexis de Belloy recently wrote an article for CNN about vacationing in France and he hit upon something that really struck me as important.  He wrote that vacationing was meant to be a chance to experience luxury, not of spending money but of spending time to do the things he would do if he had the money, and to do them every day.  That is precisely what I do in Paris. 

On a beautiful spring day, I enjoyed eating at an outdoor cafe for over two hours in the Tulleries Garden while gazing at the art nearby, art that is juxtaposed next to each other from ancient to modern, at the people walking by and people sitting in lounge chairs soaking up the sun in cool weather.  I enjoyed my rather gruff waiter, clearly frustrated with me for speaking English, his frustration with other patrons who do not understand why he has not given them their check, his frustration for having to explain again “what is that anyway”.

 I am not in any hurry to leave or get my check or have him explain the menu.  I had purchased some chocolate earlier to eat as my dessert and my gruff waiter ends up giving me a terse smile (this is a win if you have ever eaten in a French restaurant with a male French waiter) as he sees the name of the chocolatier on the bag and the chocolate tile in my hand.  I know that taste and memory is affected by one’s surroundings, and that first bite into that piece is the high notes of cherries that give the bright clear spring skies a sharpened crispness, promising a beautiful summer; the cool melt of the cocoa butter like the light wind of spring cooling the skin from the sunny day, and the decidedly chocolate low note that suddenly becomes the perfect end to a lovely meal in an outstanding Paris garden.  Yes, I come home from Paris with the best souvenir.  I have tasted the life of luxury for seven days and will again.  

Seattle, Washington gets chocolate!

If you live in or nearby Seattle, plan on attending the Seattle Chocolate Salon on May 14th.  I believe there are  100 tickets - maybe less by now - for this event. 

Click or copy and paste into your browser the link below. 
http://www.seattlechocolatesalon.com/

Eating chocolate for three or fours hours is an amazing experience for someone who loves to taste chocolate.  Be sure to drink sips of water throughout your stay, taking breaks to clear your palate and eating a protein rich breakfast to avoid feeling queasy later that day.  Mostly, have fun and share the experience with someone.

Disclaimer.

I'm just a mom and wife, who happens to make chocolate from the bean, and used to make a living cooking in commercial kitchens.  Of all the things I am, what I am not is an editor.
I take, or more correctly, create time to do those things I love or absolutely need to do.  Writing is slowly becoming more and more enjoyable and the process is, surprisingly, deeply satisfying; however, editing ends my creative process.   With limited time to do things that are not creative, I will reread my posts about three times.  When I am really pushing myself, I will read the post out loud, finding the silly errors like shutter instead of shudder and not finding it later after it has been posted.  (I did make a comment on this particular mistake, but it doesn't always appear when I check my blog)
With eBlogger, making changes after the post is published means that you, the reader, get notifications that I have posted something new. I find this bothersome, as if I am calling and hanging up the phone just as you answer it. My solution is that once a month or so, I will be sending a notification that I am making corrections and to ignore the next notifications you receive that day.  It will be similar as the bank or credit card notifications we receive, that all of your information may be compromised, and they are working on it, but mine will not have the consequences as those. 

Now, make the world a better place and eat some chocolate. ;-)

Fats, lipids and oils.

I love to cook with fats and oils. I love the tastes and smells it imparts to foods.  I like using an avocado with its high fat content  to create a creamy dressing that is both healthy and satisfying, or using peanut oil which adds a wonderful flavor to quickly cooked foods. Walnut oil is intense and a little goes a long way in dressings or drizzled over something warm.  The addition of lard or suet - if you can find it - in pound cakes  is marvelous; wrapping lard or suet around a piece of meat is to rediscover an age old method to keeping meat tender and moist with the added flavor making it sumptuous. 

As a cook, one must learn the properties of fats and oils to decide what will work best in a recipe, whether sweet or savory.  Cocoa fat, combined with the protein in the cocoa bean, is what thickens the warm or hot drink enjoyed centuries ago and, when done correctly, creates a velvety texture. The method of creating cocoa powder that is used in today's hot chocolate requires that most of the cocoa fat is removed, thereby removing the velvety texture and yet allowing for rapid dispersion in cold milk or water.  In today's world, we are rediscovering the texture that was once created by beating the chocolate fat into an emulsion using methods that did not exist years ago, a method that could take over an hour. Today we re-create that amazing texture with different methods that don't require a strong arm and loads of free time. 

Cooking with the fat in cocoa beans for savory cooking is a wonderful adventure, an excellent way to learn how flavor builds upon other flavors.  As a cook and as someone who enjoys great flavors, exploring the  savory side of chocolate is a entirely new way to understand how the fat in cocoa is special compared to other fats -- for me that is a key to happiness.