What I eat, apparently

I am dedicating this post to all of the chocolate I have managed to acquire in the past few weeks. I do this to document the madness of it all, as well as to record the piles for posterity. This way, when the Chocolate Famine strikes 30 years from now because the cocoa beans achieve consciousness and overthrow governments, I’ll be able to scroll back through the internets and reminisce about the Good Ole Days.

It all started quite innocuously. See, up until the 25th, we mostly just had cookies. Then Christmas happened, and thusly we acquired a box of petit fours, a tort, ‘drinking chocolate’ (which, according to it’s package at least, is totally fancy and so above regular ole cocoa), along with 5 lbs of fudge which didn’t make it into this picture, due to the fact that most of it crawled into the freezer as soon as I gave it the chance. 5 lbs of fudge can go quite a long way, you know. I also got Drew a tub of chocolate hazelnut spread.

Then came my little visit to For The Love of Chocolate (a glorious Richmond shop that contains every possible form of chocolate imaginable). A $10 gift certificate goes far when there’s a post-holiday 50% off discount, so I picked up a few items, getting about $35 (before discount) worth of stuff for $7something.

Then came the serious overflow. A forgotten extra present from my parents results in a giant stack of chocolate bars. Drew’s mom piles us with more goodies. At a reunion, Drew’s extended family piles some more chocolate on the heap. And then the saddest part? A late night jaunt to Walgreens in search for a single thing results in a small pile of 75% off chocolate items returning home with us. It could not be helped, though. Those puppy dog eyes, that whimper. I would have been a complete and utter bastard to have even thought of not taking those items home. Besides, they had chocolate penguins and walruses. Penguins and walruses! In chocolate form! It really doesn’t get any better then that.

Actually, this is so what I get for telling people I like getting chocolate for Christmas. The problem is this: aside from a few books and a few pairs of socks, there’s not a whole lot of things that I want that fall into the ‘reasonable item to ask for a gift’ category. It’s either needing a new toothbrush and some tampons or needing a fancy digital camera, not too much inbetween. And on top of that, I’m really wary of acquiring mildly useless items. I fight packrattery with a passion. So, I ask for things that will go away eventually. I’ve moved out of my candle phase, have enough lotion to lubricate a spaceship at this point (as well as enough soap to wash it off again), and enough CD-Rs to last me through the next year. So, this mostly just leaves food. After all, I eat almost anything. Yet, for some reason the majority of people find it odd that, when asked what I want, I reply that what I really need is a nice tuna steak. And thusly, they default to the always appropriate edible gift: chocolate.

Not that this is a bad thing.

Sometimes, you just have too many bananas. This predicament can be more common then one might think. Bananas, as compared to many other produce items, are generally dirt cheap. And so, it happened that I bought a bunch of bananas during a shopping stint, and then proceeded to buy another bunch of bananas just a day or two later, having completely forgotten about the first bunch.

In any case, there ended up being two spotty and sad bananas left over, a bit too far gone for anyone in their right mind to want to eat. But not all was lost, banana bread came to the rescue!

I did a google search for banana bread recipes with cinnamon, and ended up finding a recipe which also called for chocolate chips, which of course was a bonus. Here’s the delicious virgin terrain:

Anyhow, I grabbed the recipe from here. The only alterations I made were using 1/2 wheat flour and 1/2 white, and a wee bit of nutmeg wandered in there as well.

Now what I find fascinating about all of this is that I altered a recipe that I’d janked from someone, who’d janked and altered that recipe from someone else who had done the same. It’s like playing Telephone, except with food. So apparently someone needs to post a recipe for, say, chocolate cake, and see where it ends up in 6 months time or so. Either there will be approximately 2378429437 variations of chocolate cake, or it will have mutated completely into crab bisque. I’m rooting for the latter, it makes the world seem much more interesting.

In any case, the banana bread was quite tasty. Especially when microwaved for maximum gooeyness!

I’ve recently come to the realization that yogurt + fruit + granola is a rather gratifying sort of breakfast. But you know what makes it even better? Adding M&Ms. It’s like a party in your mouth!

The strategy is to mix it up just enough. You want the colors to swirl around and look all festive, but too much mixing leads to brown yogurt goo with brown now-naked M&Ms floating around in said brown goo. Which, albeit, still tastes rather good, but it simply isn’t as funfetti-tastic.

Apparently I’m obligated to make a post about brownies once every 2 weeks or so. I called them mayflies, recently, based on their tendency to not live more then one day. Brownies are a bit like mosquitoes as well, hovering about on a regular basis. Except they’re the sort of mosquitoes that you really want to divebomb into your mouth and down your throat, soon to be followed by a milk mosquito, or something like that. Mmmm milk mosquito.

In any case, this is a horrible picture of a delicious item:

I promise that I will a.) start actually setting these pictures up to be more photogenic and b.) start seriously considering getting a camera that does closeups better. But more a then b, as I’m poor. Unless you want to give me money. Or perhaps a decent camera. I’m flexible on that, really.

In any case, these brownies were awesome. Not just because they were brownies, though. They’re awesome because I hacked a cake mix to achieve them. Note: this is a tangent quite similar to my not long ago discovery that cake mix can be used to make cookies.

So, cake mix is sold in stores for rather cheap. And for some reason, brownie mixes are generally at least 150% the cost of cake mixes, and for no good reason. Well here’s the way around that: Just get a cake mix (used here is a triple chocolate cake mix), add 1/2 cup oil and 2 eggs, and mix. Then gradually add milk until it’s about the consistency of brownie mix. 1/3 cup or something like that, I was all lazy and didn’t measure. Then bake for 30 minutes or so, cool and devour. As good as any brownies I’ve paid too much for!

Strategic chocolate chips, sprinkles, and nuts are also highly recommended.

Brownies are, indeed, the mayflies of the food world. I do not know of any other dessert item whose lifespan is so short as that of a brownie. Especially a slightly undercooked brownie.

These were a weird brownie/cookie hybrid. Not quite as good as a delightfully undercooked brownie in my opinion, but nonetheless, still pretty darn tasty.