On Chocolate

"Chocolate is nature's way of making up for Mondays."

Why do women want chocolate when they are in love? Chocolate when they are sad? Chocolate when they are happy? Because, quite simply, it is amazing. In honor of this "holiday" I thought I'd celebrate chocolate, in all its glorious perfection - whether you make sensual chocolate-dipped strawberries for your loved one tonight, a comforting hot chocolate (if you live in the tundra like me,) or really go all out and create an exquisite chocolate dessert - mousse? yes please - you really can't go wrong with chocolate as far as I'm concerned. Yes, I am a chocoholic. No, I make no apologies for my addiction. (I blame my formative experiences - whoever thought that giving chocolate to a child for breakfast on Christmas and Easter wouldn't form a deep-rooted association with chocolate and happiness/love ... well you're just mad.) I'm simply mad about chocolate. I love dark chocolate, with all its rich sensuality, not to mention glorified antioxidants; I love milk chocolate for its creamy melt-in-your-mouth goodness that embodies perfection on your tongue.

I'll never forget the first time I had Swedish chocolate, the classic Marabou mjölkchoklad, and how insanely good it tasted with every bite - having grown up in the land of American Hershey's with the chemical after taste, my first trip to Stockholm as a pre-teen was simply mind-blowing when I discovered REAL chocolate. Then of course I met my next love, British Cadbury's, when I moved to London years later, and truly fell hard for it - by chance we came upon the Cadbury's factory in the English countryside when touring on holiday, and the air literally smelled of chocolate in the surrounding fields - it was like Willy Wonka realized. Then there's the Swiss chocolate that we brought as a treat on our backpacking trip through Morocco, and the infamous day we went hiking in the mountain forests searching for monkeys near Azrou (it sounds like I'm making this up, but it actually happened, really) and after hiking for miles in the freezing rain, riding a donkey down the side of a rockey mountain and returning to the village soaked to the bone and shivering, we climbed under the covers and broke off little bits of that Swiss chocolate bar, the tiny morsels melting on our tongues, and in that moment, it was absolute heaven. Chocolate.