gritty

Which I love.  But others are mixed.  And it was time to try.  Something new.  A new creation.  To make a creamier chocolate.  With a slightly different flavor.  And some with filling … Back in the lab.  Creating.  Tasting.  Loving.  Self.  Creation.  Chocolate.  Lab.

reality check

I made a new chocolate recipe today. It was so good, I was scarfing it out of the bowl before I even put it into the little shapes to cool. It is a little scary changing a recipe that you love. What if the changes don’t enhance the chocolate? I know ther is remaking. And I’ve tried to embrace it. But I am a little too much of a control freak to go all the way with it. I guess I could always make smaller batches, but I love having tons of chocolate in my house. OK, I could make several smaller batches and taste them all. That may be the next thing I try … Next time …

making chocolate at night

Sounds romantic. It could be. It should be. You, the stars, your kitchen, your chocolate. But there is a downside. Crazy as it may seem. A downside to what seems like a beautiful night. It is the tasting. Also crazy. That something so good – tasting chocolate – could be in any way shape or form negative. But it has a dark side. That when you are done, pleased, joyful, and ready for bed, you will be awake gazing into the darkness of the night for hours waiting for the chocolate buzz to wear off. Sunshine, disco, funk, dancing. Chocolate making. In the daytime.

touch

There is something very tender about making chocolate with someone you love. Just watching that person crumble the special flavors into the bowl, or gently insterting a cherry or nut into the liquid candy. A love. A beauty. An innocence. I wanna hold your hand.

re-made chocolate

Re-made chocolate keeps the essence of its original parts.  When you remake chocolate from bars that you didn’t like, especially when those bars not only didn’t taste right, but also didn’t feel right – there will always be something energetically off about the re-made bites.  Re-re-making doesn’t eliminate the fundamental energy of the parts.  As much as it may break your heart, some chocolate needs to be binned.  Eating it will not give you what you need, want, have come to expect from chocolate.  And chocolate deserves that.  Love.

guru

Re-making is ephemeral. Even if you LOVE it, the chocolate will only happen that one time. In that one way. You never know exactly what went into the re-make – what the proportions were in the original, how much of the bar-you-didn’t-like was left and thrown in the melt-down bowl … So you mix in what you feel will transform it, and you taste. A taste that you cannot break down to its components and repeat. A flavor without a recipe.

A xocolate that is ephemeral.

I’m not comfortable with ephemera. I like to document, have a record of things I enjoy. Be able to reproduce pleasurable experiences. Memorize, if you will.

Each day I learn something from my chocolate. My teacher. My guru. My breakfast.

re-making

Re-making chocolate is an unsettling process. Especially when the chocolate was made by a friend. First off, it means you didn’t like her/his chocolate. But then comes the essence of it – you don’t like the base, it doesn’t match your mind’s recipe, and you want to make something good out of something that, to you, tastes like crap. But you don’t know what is in it, so the alchemy must become intiutive. Or you hope it becomes intuitive – otherwise you are just making it worse, or different but no better, and using ingredients that could be better applied to a new batch.

my first time …

I feel best when I am around animals. They ground me. I feel free with them. That I am connected on a nonverbal plane, and that from there I can be/feel/create me. It is probably not a coincidence that after sharing 14 years of my life with my chocolate labrador retriever I first re-accessed my creativity making chocolate. In my kitchen. With her big brown eyes watching me, wishing I would share.