Sunday, September 24, 2006
How to Eat a Chocolate (A Simple 6 Step Method That YOU Can Try!)
This weekend, for those of you who forgot to check your lunar calendars, marked the beginning of the High Holy Days, the first ones since I stopped working in a public school system. Not that it mattered in this case, given that Rosh Hashanah started on Friday night. To celebrate the occasion, I traveled to my aunt's house for holiday dinner with the family. After a meal filled with fun-filled banter, occasional mathematical puzzles, and discussions of schools past (Underwood), present (Old Ivy), and future (my cousin is writing applicaion essays this fall), my grandparents presented each of the grandchildren present with a small gift...a box of chocolates.
Now, some folks will tell you that life is something like a box of chocolates, but that ain't so. At least, not the chocolates in this box. At least, my life didn't come with such a detailed set of instructions on the back of it. Consider the following steps that the manufacturer suggests will allow you to fully appreciate the deliciousness of this particular brand of confection.
Each Dark Square has an inner essence to be captured during any time of the day or the night. Take a moment away from meals, smoke, and other beverage or food. You will then be able to appreciate what we have prepared for you. These are the simple rules for a correct dark chocolate tasting:
1) Warm up the chocolate in your hand without unwrapping it; a cold chocolate cannot express itself.
2) Unwrap the chocolate and observe it carefully: it must have no spots or imperfections and its color must be all alike. With it's [sic.] shininess it is a pleasure for the eyes as well.
3) Hold it between your fingers and smell it; its intense fragrance is the second gift your senses will enjoy.
4) The ritual wants that you keep the square at the center of the tongue, intact, while encountering the palate until it melts, slowly.
5) The chocolate becomes supple, while the wide variety of flavors expands itself. In silence the sensations will redouble themselves: you will savor the strength first, then the variations, finally the persistent aftertaste.
6) Now that it's almost all gone, you will be able to tell what a real pleasure it all was.
At this point you can start over again. Enjoy it!
While I appreciate the level of detail, I'm not sure I have the patience to expand my current 2 step chocolate eating method (Step 1: Unwrap the chocolate. Step 2: Eat the chocolate.) by a factor of three. Especially not for a box of 48 single origin dark chocolates from Madagascar, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic. Don't ask me how I'll know the nation of origin for each chocolate...I don't think they're labelled, and strangely, despite all of the other details included on the box, no additional instructions are provided.
But perhaps that's for the best. One would hate to overcomplicate one of life's simple pleasures.
This weekend, for those of you who forgot to check your lunar calendars, marked the beginning of the High Holy Days, the first ones since I stopped working in a public school system. Not that it mattered in this case, given that Rosh Hashanah started on Friday night. To celebrate the occasion, I traveled to my aunt's house for holiday dinner with the family. After a meal filled with fun-filled banter, occasional mathematical puzzles, and discussions of schools past (Underwood), present (Old Ivy), and future (my cousin is writing applicaion essays this fall), my grandparents presented each of the grandchildren present with a small gift...a box of chocolates.
Now, some folks will tell you that life is something like a box of chocolates, but that ain't so. At least, not the chocolates in this box. At least, my life didn't come with such a detailed set of instructions on the back of it. Consider the following steps that the manufacturer suggests will allow you to fully appreciate the deliciousness of this particular brand of confection.
Each Dark Square has an inner essence to be captured during any time of the day or the night. Take a moment away from meals, smoke, and other beverage or food. You will then be able to appreciate what we have prepared for you. These are the simple rules for a correct dark chocolate tasting:
1) Warm up the chocolate in your hand without unwrapping it; a cold chocolate cannot express itself.
2) Unwrap the chocolate and observe it carefully: it must have no spots or imperfections and its color must be all alike. With it's [sic.] shininess it is a pleasure for the eyes as well.
3) Hold it between your fingers and smell it; its intense fragrance is the second gift your senses will enjoy.
4) The ritual wants that you keep the square at the center of the tongue, intact, while encountering the palate until it melts, slowly.
5) The chocolate becomes supple, while the wide variety of flavors expands itself. In silence the sensations will redouble themselves: you will savor the strength first, then the variations, finally the persistent aftertaste.
6) Now that it's almost all gone, you will be able to tell what a real pleasure it all was.
At this point you can start over again. Enjoy it!
While I appreciate the level of detail, I'm not sure I have the patience to expand my current 2 step chocolate eating method (Step 1: Unwrap the chocolate. Step 2: Eat the chocolate.) by a factor of three. Especially not for a box of 48 single origin dark chocolates from Madagascar, Ecuador, and the Dominican Republic. Don't ask me how I'll know the nation of origin for each chocolate...I don't think they're labelled, and strangely, despite all of the other details included on the box, no additional instructions are provided.
But perhaps that's for the best. One would hate to overcomplicate one of life's simple pleasures.
