A WORLD WITHOUT CHOCOLATE!!!!!
Going through todays DIGG articles today, I found one extremely disturbing to me. The headline said: "A World Without Chocolate?". Needless to say I nearly passed out backwards out of my chair onto our Love Birds cage. That would have been the most excitement they would have seen in weeks. Scientist said that one day (and how soon will THAT be?), that world will be in short supply of this sanity saving, children bribing, substance of female survival. Okay, after the week I've had, this is just enough to send me over the edge. Not only do I have to start stocking rice and flour for the impending food shortage, I had better add semi-sweet morsals to that list as well. Obama needs to add an emergency measure to the new stimulus plan that says that one whole state will be devoted to nothing but growing the cacao tree. This is a national emergency!
What gets me the most is the absolutely perplexing question "What will the world be like without chocolate?" Now either the journalist who reported this story is a complete buffoon, or they've never even tasted chocolate (even the cheap yuckie stuff you get from old relatives at holidays). They wouldn't have even made that completely inept statement if their palate had touched the delicate balance of a chocolate truffle. Hey, I'm just a little Missy poo-poo living in a mock-suburbia with four kids, but I know surely know what it would do to MY life if there was no chocolate - END IT! This is the stuff that heals boo-boos, mends relationship conflicts, gets children to poop in the toilet while training (those M&M's peanuts worked well for me), replaces sex (so the "scientists" say), and gets us through those moments in the day when a Vallium just isn't convenient or available.
When I was a kid, I would listen in horror as my mother told me tales of the depression when chocolate just wasn't available (those soldiers boys were slopping it up left and right!). It was a time of sacrifice (time of death, I remembered thinking). She told me when news spread that a store had some, the kids waited in long, long, lines just to get ahold of one of those black, sweet bars of gold. It wasn't the stories of walking in the snow to school with holes in their shoes that horrified me the most; it was the though of chocolate not being available on demand. Now I know why it was called the "depression". I cannot imagine that happening now with all the genetically modified ways of making food. Can't they clone cacao trees like they do those dogs for deranged people with too much money on their hands?
One day, several years ago, my sister-n-law Deborah and I were talking about food. I was going through a period where I really wasn't eating chocolate, or any sweets for that matter. I know, I know, it wasn't a normal period in my life, but I managed to pull myself out of it. But I remember her telling me that she didn't like chocolate, so she didn't eat much of it. To this day, that statement confuses the absolute heck out of me. Here is this beautiful woman, bright, funny, guy-magnet at 50, athletic; but she doesn't like chocolate. What the hell does she get at Valentine's from her boyfriend of six years?
"Hi Deborah, here's a dozen roses and some lemon meringue pie for Valentine's Day", I cleverly imagine him saying.
NOT!! I finally knew the flaw in this otherwise perfect individual (other than the fact that she married my brother, but THAT'S an entirely different episode on a different channel that I don't subscribe to anymore!). Why in God's name did this woman NOT like chocolate? I never asked because it just didn't make any sense to me that anyone would not like chocolate; especially a female. I just subsided in the fact that maybe she had "Chicken Little Syndrome", because some neurotic dentist said all her teeth would fall out if she ate the stuff. To this day, I have never brought the subject up with her again.
Let's face it; I have four kids I cannot live without chocolate. It is part of those six basic food groups: grains, vegetables, fruits, milk, meat and beans, and..... chocolate! It is a food group all on it's own. All of us mothers know this. The real knowledge of its' power was bestowed upon us the moment we pushed that 9.2 ounce screaming watermelon out of our over stretched uterus. Heck, a pound of the stuff should have been included in every Dr. T. Berry Brazelton parenting book ever published. Even after years of child-rearing and still feeling like the worst parent with a ton of guilt on our shoulders, we would say it was all worth it because of the amount of chocolate that passed between our lips. Feeding them chocolate was the only thing our children would never hold against us. Have you ever heard an adult admit to their therapist, "my parents ruined my life by forcing me to eat chocolate"? Nope - never happened, never will.
There has been a constant bag of bittersweet semi-morsals in my freezer since the day my twins were born 11 1/2 year ago. That will not change until the last child has left. That should be in about 15 more years. So the chocolate supply has got to last until then. After that, I guess I'll have to be prepared to forage for the stuff. But chocolate is a necessity when child rearing. When it comes to toilet training (again, I hate the word potty!), how else do we encourage them to do the big nasty in their cute little, song playing, Sesame Street laden, toilet training chairs? Unless you were one of those who bought that package of cheesy flower petals, or toy cars that changed colors when you pee'd on them, your cabinet was stocked to the max with some sort of chocolate bribe. How are we going to toilet train our kids without those M&M's for God's sake?
What about how we reward our kids for good behavior, or for doing chores at age three? Do you think they want a stinking card for their efforts. Or God forbid, a HUG? NO; they want chocolate. They want big gooey mouthfuls of it like when you make chocolate cake and their little heads accidentally-on-purpose land in the bowl with a giggle. What comes out resembles something like that Black Lagoon character from those old B movies. But it's your child, and THAT is their reward for a job well done helping mommie in the kitchen without dumping all the flour on the floor again! If you took that bowl away and offered a hug instead, what do you think would happen? That Black Lagoon character would suddenly be real, be 3 feet high, and standing in your kitchen growing horns and fangs right before your eyes. If you hadn't thought about running yet, you might wanna think about it now because that kid/monster is about to unleash a wrath that not even God has ever prophesied about. We are talking a MAJOR meltdown is in the near future.
Even my 11 year old daughter knows the importance of chocolate in living an everyday normal life. And this girl is moody as shit! She's like an 11 year old tween going on menopausal, but even she knows what to reach for to snap herself out of it. So, when my personality resembles that same Black Lagoon archetype (and this happens way too often these days), she instantly knows is time to head for the freezer and grab a handful of Ghirardelli's (because Belgian is not in the budget this month). She politely will whirl around and look me dead in the eyes and say "here mom, THIS will make your day better". Boy, she knows me better than I know myself sometimes. The wisdom of a child minus the hot flashes.
If chocolate were to suddenly be rationed, or God forbid, disappear, I predict mass female chaos would ensue. Grocery stores would be ransacked; their flour and rice stockpiles would be there long after the chocolate disappeared. Seemingly innocent children would now be seen fighting like rabid dogs over tiny pieces of chocolate that have fallen from the careless lips of another. Mothers would be attacking pharmacists over anything synthetic that would closely resemble the affects of chocolate in calming their out of control kids (or parents for that matter, I being one of them). Baker's would be sobbing in the streets with their bowls and beaters because no one would be ordering their strawberry or lemon cha-cha cakes instead of white or dark chocolate ones. What is a lemon cha-cha cake in the first place? The "Ace of Cakes" would be taken off the air. Hell, half of Food Network would be taken off the air. That guy from Sugar Rush would have to go back being a lawyer again (sigh).
Don't even think about suggesting a "chocolate substitue" like carob! I'm sorry, but carob, (which is faux chocolate, eeewwww!), is NOT gonna cut it my house. I eat healthy, but I have my boundaries when it comes to "substitutes". Like those idiotic chocolate sprays that some dumb diet company came out with that's suppose to relieve your cravings. I THINK NOT! That's like suggesting that you give a guy a beer flavored substitute and telling him to deal with it! As we know, all of mankind would come to a screeching halt if that happened.
Since this possible chocolate shortage is caused by a huge global demand for the stuff, I say those who don't really need chocolate, - STOP EATING IT! Save it for those of us who use it for a greater purpose than just satisfying our decadent tastebuds. We are in survival mode because we have issues with our children, our husbands, the economy (or lack thereof), and our mundane little lives. It gets us through that time of the month, and it gives our kids another day of happiness when they come home to a plate of much needed homemade brownies with thick ganache' on top.
In fact it is the bowl of leftover Valentine's Hershey dark chocolate squares that are getting me through this blog while all four of my kids are screaming for me at the same time about their Wii game, and my husband is yelling that he has no one to relate to around here! We are on the brink of insanity without this stuff. Chocolate is OUR medicine of necessity. The amount needed depends on the days Homeland Security level - meaning my home! National Security, our hormones, our levels of self-inflicted depression, and the ability for our children to be good while we're behind YOU at the checkout lines of department stores depend on it!
So if your entire life's survival doesn't really depend on chocolate, back off fluffy - it's ours!
On the lighter note: if the thought of a chocolate shortage has now stressed your day out, I'm sure there is a little bit of a half-eaten heart leftover from your child's party at school this past week. One could beg a nibble. But take two because you never know when this will be your last.
