Hooray for DNA
Rooted within my DNA is a thriving, chocolate-coded gene. Propelled from the distant past by ancestral kinfolk, its genetic pattern becomes operational at birth and overflows with chocolate as instructed. How else to explain my intense devotion to this velvety delight?
I need a daily fix, and am not choosy: milk chocolate, dark, white, or bittersweet will do. And without a whimper, I’ll grab a handful of semi-sweet chocolate bits straight from the package: you know, the ones made for baking.
Mixing nuts with chocolate increases the allure. They add a certain crunchy characteristic. Nuts are not essential, however, to the ambrosial sensation so wondrous to the tongue.
I have always been passionate about chocolate, with or without nuts. It is a love affair that has followed me from childhood through middle-age and beyond. My chocolate palate is the one constant I can count on.
The pedestrian Hershey bar is high on my choco-list. Well . . . so are Goobers chocolate-covered peanuts. A chocolate truffle by Godiva is not bad either, maybe a little high-toned but nevertheless a worthy choice.
As a child, my fussing would stop as long as chocolate was in close range. I drank milk like a good girl, but milk was never an uncomplicated thirst quencher for me, and never a stand-alone drink. I remain committed to that belief. Milk was created to go with something. That something is chocolate anything.
My obsession has evolved over time. Take chocolate cake. At one point the most outstanding of all things edible, this heavenly all-chocolate soul food, while still madly loved, gave way to the brilliantly conceived Mallomars.
Once cheerfully packaged in glossy yellow paper with brown and blue print, the Mallomars box has lost its glossy covering and is now sold in a sober brown and blue print box. Although its papery luster has been lost the box, as before, holds eighteen dark brown mounds of chocolate-coated marshmallows smoothly layered over thin vanilla wafers. Yum.
Rich and squishy under its authentic chocolate cover, these intoxicating cookies are not made in the summer because of the destructive forces of summertime heat. Refrigeration seems to ruin them. As a result, we Mallomars loyalists suffer withdrawal pains yearly from June to September.
Not everyone finds a fidelity to chocolate desirable. There is an unfortunate maxim that exists in our society today stating that both children and adults should not eat chocolate, or anything sugary for that matter. Health advocates cry, “Empty calories!” Dentists moan, “Doomed teeth!” Surgeons smirk, “Clogged arteries!” And so, they try to deprive us all of an extraordinary taste tingle.
I’m happy to say, though, that I ignore the rhetoric and feed almost everyone in sight the chocolate I might have, while carefully withholding it from those with nut allergies. Those poor things.
With that in mind, I decided it was time to introduce my eighteen-month-old grandson, Jonah, to the current chocolate exemplar. I held him in my arms and anxiously offered him a Mallomar.
I needn’t have worried. After a first tentative bite, Jonah confirmed his heritage with a wide grin and swiftly stuffed the rest of the cookie into his mouth. Shortly after, his face smeared with chocolate, Jonah asked for more. And he got it. He’s such a mess, I thought, and he won’t eat dinner tonight, I know that; and his mother will be annoyed with me, but how could I resist — he is so adorable!
At any rate, whether DNA inherited or not, the love affair goes on. I love Jonah, Jonah loves me, and we both love Mallomars, and Hershey bars, and Goobers, and Godiva, and. . . .
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Take a look at this site, www.thechocolatelife.com . It’s full of chocolate recipes, interesting information, and has a forum, too!
Another site www.virtualchocolate.com is chock full of quotes about chocolate. It’s fun to read.
Editor: Edwin C. Goldstein