machine

The Torture and Temptation of the Lust for Really Good Chocolate

I’m having a small problem with chocolate… I want it! I want it often and I want it served warm and tasting like real chocolate with cream to smooth it out. I want it every day, more than once.

But, I’m trying to ignore chocolate and cheesecake and ice cream and all those soft, warm or chilled, yummy things. I lost almost 20 pounds but last month I put back two of them.

I blame chocolate, whether the chocolate truly deserves the blame or not.

I Know it will be Warm, Rich and Creamy – Everything I Lust for in Chocolate

Did you know how nice and easy it is to order chocolate to be delivered to your door? I ordered a box of chocolates from a Canadian chocolate company out on the west coast, Vancouver, British Columbia. To get to my house that chocolate had to travel across thousands of kilometres, several provinces and it made the trip a day early. I opened the box, reverently. I tried to be mindful and enjoy every moment and each nuance of chocolate. But, I had eaten three of the milk chocolate bars before I could make myself put the box away.

So, ordering chocolate is not the best way to deal with a craving for chocolate.

I’m still looking for alternative ideas. Today I noticed this Bialetti hot chocolate pot, mostly for the photo. I can taste that chocolate. I know it will be warm and rich and creamy… Everything I lust for in chocolate. I haven’t decided whether or not to order the machine. It’s a risk. What if I like it too much?!

Then I started looking at other well known (to me) chocolate companies who will send packages of chocolate to your door, via Amazon. Oh, the torture, the temptation… I can taste it and it tastes GOOD!

The best I can do is give in to the craving for chocolate but moderate it. This means letting myself have the chocolate but only once a month and then making sure the chocolate I have at that time is the best possible chocolate on the planet at that particular place and time. No supermarket chocolate bars. No packaged hot chocolate mixes. Only the best, real chocolate and I want it smooth, rich and creamy. A chocolate pudding, but not something out of a cardboard box.

I’m adding the hot chocolate maker to my list of things to buy, along with a bathroom scale. Next month there will be chocolate! Better chocolate.

Curiousity and Self Discipline

This was from an old profile I wrote for the BackWash site. It may have been the first one I wrote there. I thought it was pretty clever. The site is gone, I found it via the Internet Wayback Machine,  so I’m saving it here.

Life endlessly intrigues me. I have so much curiousity that I had to remove all my self discipline just to give myself room to think.

Living Will

Sandy Vernon

MY LIVING WILL
Last night, one of my best friends and I were sitting in my living room and
I said to her, I never want to live in a vegetative state, dependent on some
machine and fluids from a bottle. If that ever happens, just pull the plug.
She got up, unplugged the computer, and threw out my wine.
She’s such a bitch.

Startch on Black Clothing is Not a Good Thing

I know I shouldn’t be wearing black today but it’s what I pulled out from the pile of clothes I should have put away from the laundry this week. I’m about to begin peeling potatoes. If you have done that a few times you know how that statch runs out and gets all over your hands and your shirt, even if you try to be tidy and not wipe your hands on yourself. But, thankfully, we have the washing machine, here and working even now. I try not to take things for granted but when you don’t have something for several months you remember all over again how much you shouldn’t take it for granted.

We are still landscaping. This weekend we are also making dinner for a family get together on Sunday, tomorrow. I don’t mind the cooking and the work, too much. But I do get kind of fed up with being pushed around and having most of my input vetoed, often before I have even finished or hardly begun speaking. Mothers! It must just be a thing with them, a part of never really letting go.

It is funny cause I can still remember years ago (decades of years) when I was in my teens and she began to talk to me as an adult versus a kid. I was so honoured and so self important and felt like I really was a someone. Oh how we have regressed… !

Living with your Mother still has a feeling of not being a good thing. Even if it does help us both out. I do miss having my own place, my own space where things are not randomly and casually moved around. I like finding my toothbrush each morning for instance. That’s another thing you should not take for granted. Sometimes I feel the only way to really keep track of anything is to hoard it all in my bedroom. But it is getting pretty packed in here and I feel trapped with stuff surrounding me. Urrgh.

At least I still have the little things. My nice smelling shampoos which she doesn’t use much, though I leave them out cause I don’t mind if she does. I usually get that tacky shampoo head from using the same shampoo all the time by the time I am halfway through the bottle of shampoo so I’m fine with sharing it. Just lets me have the excuse to buy more, more often.

I have my books too. Though everyone acts like I’ve got a disease when I mention getting a new one. I don’t keep the ones I have read, the fiction ones at least. But, even I admit the pile of nonfiction books is pretty huge and I haven’t read most of them. I do seem to collect them like dust bunnies.

Well, enough babbling. I have to get to potatoes for that potato salad. Party on.

Cinnamon

Teena has a post about cinnamon . I’m not a health nut. I just don’t have the patience to think about more than I already am. I know what I like, I know (more or less) what is high in fat and calories and I make my decisions as I go. I know raw onions make me really sick so I avoid those.

The cinnamon thing was interesting though. I’ve been taking vitamins and a few times a month I actually pick the jar up from my desk and swallow one. The cinnamon would be simpler. I like adding it to coffee for instance. After reading Teena’s post I wanted to look up cinnamon recipes . What comes to mind first though are those delicious and sinful buns, rolled up with cinnamon and icing. Too yummy! All the cinnamon roll recipes use a bread machine. So I didn’t spend much time on them. I don’t use a bread machine. Seems a bit of a cop out.

Chewy Cinnamon Cookies

Ingredients:
2 cups graham cracker crumbs
1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon salt
1 cup butter
1/4 cup white sugar
1 1/4 cups packed brown sugar
2 large eggs
1 teaspoon vanilla extract

Directions:

1. Preheat an oven to 350 degrees F (175 degrees C). Stir together graham cracker crumbs, flour, cinnamon, baking soda, and salt in a mixing bowl; set aside.

2. Beat the butter, white sugar, and brown sugar with an electric mixer in a large bowl until smooth. Beat in the eggs one at a time, allowing each egg to blend into the butter mixture before adding the next. Mix in vanilla. Mix in the flour mixture. Scoop the dough out onto ungreased baking sheets by rounded spoonfuls.
3. Bake in the preheated oven until slightly browned at the edges, 9 to 11 minutes.

The Odes of Our Lives

Day three of babysitting, but no, only day two actually. It just seems like day three. I am so tired my eyes start to close as soon as I get comfortable sitting anywhere. Sleeping on that couch is the worst part of babysitting. I am so glad to get back to my own bed each time.

Glad to help out my sister and the kids but it’s turning into a job almost. Maybe next weekend will be slow for them. (Or slowish).

I have to get Sears to bring a new washing machine. I’m getting the hot potato treatment with this one for sure. First it’s the plumbing, it isn’t hooked up right. But it is. Then it’s in need of a part being replaced. That took 4 appointments (2 which they broke) and one month without a washing machine. Then it’s the electrical outlet, it’s reversed polarized. So I bring in someone to look at that, not someone from Sears. But, it’s not that. The outlet is fine, likely it’s the machine that is wired wrong. So that is about where I am with it. Likely it will be another month before I can get a new machine exchanged out and get it all installed yet again. I severely doubt I will ever deal with Sears again at this point. Not even for a paperclip.