Bake and Shake

Chocolate. It finds YOU.

Some time ago, I was sent a giant box in the mail.

Oh, nice. What was inside?

Assorted Chocolates, Fleur de Sel Caramels and Ginger, Earl Grey, Mint and Kahlua Truffles

Oh Charles. Based in San Francisco, with a commitment to using organic, natural and quality ingredients (for instance, their chocolates are either 41%, milk, or 61% bittersweet. Those are some nice cacao percentages), Charles Chocolates has an intense selection of tasties. Do you like that most official language? I have no idea if they know what kind of site is advertising their classy goods. But not just chocolates -- pate de fruit and Meyer Lemon or Blood Orange marmalades are among their offerings. I haven't tasted them. But I bet they're legit.

I've never had this happen before, you know, so I don't know what I'm doing beyond the obvious -- I ate these chocolates, and they were delicious. They were also free, and free from strings, and I shared them with a lot of people and we all really liked them. So I'm telling you about them, like everything else I like, only I didn't have to pay shipping and handling.

Charles Chocolates also included one of their Edible Boxes, a bittersweet and white chocolate fully-edible vessel, filled with heart-shaped truffles, each infused with either Passionfruit, Raspberry or Mojito flavors and dusted with silver or gold luster. The passion fruit was my favorite -- it's sweet tang contrasts so well with the dark chocolate, and each piece is so quality that it literally dissolves on the tongue, small enough to feel like a private indulgence. You know? Like I don't like describing food in the way of a Lifetime Movie commercial, but it was. Truly "A Private Indulgence: Starring Delta Burke and Meshach Taylor, reunited for the first time since 'Designing Women'".

But what really got to me, in that particular way, was the box of Fleur De Sel caramels included in the three-box assortment. Thin wafers of chocolate enrobed, chewy caramel that honestly taste just of butter, sugar and salt -- they aren't gloppy, and the caramel didn't spill out after the first nibble like so many others, instead it strings and tugs against your teeth and then melts instantly. These chocolates and confections aren't grainy sweet, they aren't overwhelming and in some cases (the mojito truffle) the flavors chosen for each piece almost surprise you, make you think and identify each note. Like an SAT Prep course, these chocolates. Or that Jazz CD someone keeps playing every time you're in the car. That damn Jazz CD.

They were really good. Everyone who came over ate some, and the lies I fed my loved ones and friends were intense -- this site is a secret, in that "I don't really talk about it" way, and explaining why there was a large amount of fancy chocolate delivered to me was hard. "I won. A contest." And the chocolate box, which sounds like a Janet Jackson track or something Ja Rule might rap on, was the best because people went feral -- first they didn't believe it was made of chocolate, then they'd pick it up and gnaw a corner off. So many mouths, so many happy mouths cracking into a lid, a slab of decorated white chocolate, or the box itself, which was dark chocolate. So thank you, Charles. Whoever you are, you chocolate heathen, for bringing such fantastic sin into my life. I keep pencils in your boxes, now.

Tiny food business

Right now, my "job" requires me to be both super stressed and physically active. I am a multi-tasking stripper, trying to juggle my business and my boobies. One hand on the pole, the other clutching a planner. Except not at all.

I'm just running around a lot, hitting the sheets tired way too late each night and not taking very good care of myself in the food basis -- not eating enough, at all, which I've learned by now does nothing but slow my metabolism, and make me run out of steam before I need to. So I've turned to every woman's super space food, yogurt.

I hate yogurt, I need to tell you this. To me, Yoplait is a horrifying experience -- it always goes lukewarm halfway through the cup, there's a chalky aftertaste and it feels like it is coming back up as I try to choke it down. I was there for the revolution, though, and began to eat low or non-fat Greek-style yogurt, and kept that habit up for around a year. Calcium, protein, cultures. But I stopped, and now I eat a Larabar or Odwalla bar if I'm lucky, and then I follow that up with a handful of nuts or another Larabar, which I love beyond reason, a few hours later and then eat actual food once I'm done. But this morning I realized that I've felt better on the days that I added something else into the mix, and that something, today and every morning from now on, must be yogurt.

Enter Rachel's Yogurt.

I buy them locally at New Seasons, and they are not only delicious, with interesting flavors (my favorite is 'Vitality' -- Pomegranate Acai) and beautiful packaging, but they're sweetened with cane juice instead of artificial sweeteners or corn syrup. They can be eaten quickly, and you don't have to chew. Along those lines, I also make meat smoothies, but I think the yogurt wins out over that taste treat. Liquified Venison at eight in the morning is a hard thing to beat, though.

That Girl Turned Twenty-Five

The older I get, the more overwhelmed I am by kindness. "Thank you. THANK YOU." I get weepy and very Mia Michaels when it comes to gratitude, and on my birthday I didn't know what to do with all of it, so I choreographed a dance about the symbolic relationship between cake, Ageism in the Western World and stopping the spread of TB on major airlines. Set to Queen's "Don't Stop Me Now".

So the days before my birthday were the pits, just awesomely horrible, emotional days on everyone's part and for no real reason, besides the saying of something stupid too early in the morning. No one likes to feel like a creep right before his or her birthday, I'm telling you this even though you already know it. I didn't even want to celebrate it, with anyone, I wanted to bury myself in a drainage ditch and maybe drink some roughly filtered grain alcohol. Read a BOP! magazine and mourn my youth, and wonder what Zac Efron is doing to avoid aging. I personally think those High School Musical movies are Satan's own, televised Pyramid Scheme. "After the third one, Vanessa Hudgens, you'll get a boat."

Those were my plans. But on Monday night, something broke and when I woke up on Tuesday I was born into a world where I was woken up by a huge bouquet of flowers and an iced coffee, and fresh blueberries and chilled champagne in the fridge. Do you know what I like to do on my actual birthday? Nothing. I like to sleep in and listen to Jermaine Stewarts "We don't have to take our clothes off (to have a good time)" for two hours in a row, and then I like to play the Gym Class Heroes version back to back with the original, for another two hours and then I take the advice and get dressed. Only I was twenty-five, and I had shit to do.

After bacon, and Lilosas (Ruby Red Grapefruit juice and champagne), I had to go have my follicles maimed. Like I said in an e-mail, whereas before I had curly hair that when straightened, fell into side bangs, I now have (for the moment) straight hair with shorter, thicker side bangs, and layers. It is radical, the equivalent of the Amish opening a Glamour Shots boutique photo studio, where you can have soft-focus shots of you, draped in a boa and milking cap, done after Sabbath.

Cakes arrived, from Pix Patisserie, a Jane Avril (which was unavailable, and then it was, and I didn't ask questions), a dense, shunned Queen of Sheba truffle cake (upper left), and a Royale (lower left) and Amelie (lower right -- that little mound is creme brulee). I was outrageously, crazy excited over them.

And then I got dressed, and went out to dinner, where the kindness continued from all angles. My camera stayed home, and called her fake Canadian Boyfriend, Chaz. "When I kiss him, he tastes like maple syrup." But I managed to take this, mouths full of good cakes, fizzy throats, right after we slammed a dirty a spoon in the neck of the finest grocery store champagne and ordering "Fur" on Pay-Per-View, right around 2:30 in the morning.

The day was fantastic. I did not know what to do, as I said, with all of it. I don't know how to express myself, other than to say that I love my family, I love my friends, I love the twenty-five years I've lived through and look forward to the next twenty-five, and the twenty-five after that, and after that. I want to live as long as a Twinkie, because what else is better than that.

Feelings. And Roast Chicken.

Sometimes you need someone to cook for you.

I am twenty-four years old, but lately I have been feeling fourteen emotionally. Tonight it all came spilling out, halting voice and fast blinking to avoid crying. I did cry though, and I didn't see it coming. I haven't cried in a long time. I haven't needed to, but I believe, like so many other people, that crying is restorative and it happens when you need to purge those feelings that have been around too long, leeching energy and keeping you from feeling content.

My mom made roast chicken, snugged in by yukon golds, chunked onion and sweet carrots showered with sea salt -- it makes the best sound as it falls. She listened to me talk, my palms open and elbows bent as she rubbed the chicken with garlic, cracked pepper and salt. While she basted, I wept, and then we both sat, talking and sighing and explaining and I tried not to forget what I wanted to say. And when I was done, so was the chicken.

We ate with the windows open, and the cool evening filtering in, silverware clinking against plates (one of my favorite sounds). I ate until I was full, then pinched more of the buttery, sweet potatoes from where they hid among the carcass, fighting my sister for a shred of skin, because I could, because things were good again, all was upright.

I could not stop sighing all night. I felt content, and full, loved and so done. I sat on the front steps, next to a thicket of buttercups that showed up last week and ate some ice cream in the dark, and the thick, eggy-sweetness was like sucking my thumb. It plugged me up.

It was one of the most restorative meals I've ever had, and I cannot begin to describe how grateful I am.

Candy Girl: How Addictions Begin

"Chocolate covered staples. Really delicious."

So, I don't like candy.

I like chocolate, I like white chocolate, I like caramel, I like things that are "enrobed" or "coated". But I've never been someone who has to have Junior Mints or Milk Duds, who needs a Nestle's Crunch Bar or she will somehow molt her skin and grow a cloak of tacks and roll over your face. "I just needed chocolate! You can have reconstructive surgery! You hated your nose. You hated it. Stop making me feel guilt, it makes my eyes burn."

So when I'm hooked on a "candy", something that can't fight it's way to my mouth fast enough, I find it to be a big deal. Right now I'm hooked on The Cocoa Room's dragees and mixes. So far I've enjoyed the Baby Blue Almond Dragees (which are so beautiful, glossy and robins-egg blue that I hate eating them, but I do. Because I don't mind eating beautiful things. I put diamonds in my pasta. Kidneys in my shoes.), the Pistachio and Toffee Dragee mix which are pretty dangerous. Like you will need to eat them all to feel better about eating half of them. That's how this works, this kind of dangerous logic. And then a version of this, the Eclectic Dragee Mix, only the colors are pink, green and white.

That's it. That is all this post is about, how much I like candy even though I don't. I have to go follow those aqua almond dragees back to their room now, and pretend I live in the same building and not a van, on the same street. In a different city.