January 17, 2007
Working with chocolate
One of our Web designers told us in a meeting yesterday about how he got so hungry after working on our sites with pictures of chocolate for hours. I have had that same problem. You stare at these delicious pictures all day and it makes you feel like cooking -- or just eating!
This morning, I found the FoodNetwork.com e-mail newsletter in my mailbox promoting the chocolate section. Oh, those pictures look good!
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January 15, 2007
Chocolate nightmare
This is getting really weird. I never had dreams about chocolate until I gave it up 15 days ago. I had my second one last night.
This time, I was baking cookies. I dreamed I bought a tube of chocolate chip cookie dough, sliced it up into cookies, put them on a cookie sheet and placed them in something that looked like a slightly overgrown Easy Bake oven. Then I ate several of them and panicked when I remembered I'd sworn off chocolate for 2007! Another bizarre thing was that I dreamed I hadn't read the directions and noticed too late the single tube of dough was supposed to make 297 cookies. I'd therefore sliced the dough too thick and the cookie dough balls were rising in the little oven until I could see piles of them cooking on the tray.
It makes me wonder what I would dream if I gave up anything else!
This morning, our family started to go to IHOP and I knew I would have to resist my usual dish there, the chocolate chip pancakes made with cocoa and topped with chocolate chips and whipped cream. It turned out our closest IHOP was being renovated today, so we went to Mimi's Cafe instead for a delightful breakfast of french toast stuffed with cream cheese and orange marmalade. I noticed no chocolate on the menu.
15 days down, 350 to go. I'm glad it's not a leap year!
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January 13, 2007
The Breakfast Club
In the afternoon, they pulled out more chocolate goodies.
It turns out the whole class may be on a New Year's diet. We should start a pool to see who's off it by Valentine's Day.
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January 12, 2007
MLK Day is Monday
Monday marks what would have been the 78th birthday of the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. I'll have the day off and will need to resist snacking on chocolate at home.
For those, who do wish to snack, I actually found some MLK Day snacks to remind children of his message.
I don't know what Dr. King's favorite snack was, but he probably liked chocolate. His mother was the choir director at the Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta. According to the National Park Service, they had choir rehearsals at the King home and served hot chocolate and cookies to the members.
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January 11, 2007
Breakaway from my chocolate habit
It's been almost 11 full days (257.5 hours, to be exact) without chocolate and I'm still alive!
I got some inspiration while listening to my Kelly Clarkson Breakaway CD in the car this morning. Track 5 is "Gone" in which she sings about walking away in the same way that I'm breaking up with chocolate for 2007. "I'm already gone / I'm already gone / Oh, I'm already gone / Gone, gone / Already gone / I'm gone."
I was in a meeting this afternoon and one of our managers with sister site HGTV.com was enjoying a chocolate chip cookie next to me. She said it was "chocolatey goodness." I had to avoid eye contact until it was gone. At least I didn't mug her for it.
Here is a link to Foodnetwork.com recipes with chocolate chips.
Someone else visited my office and had some M&M's from my dispenser. The little clicks of the candies dropping out the slot was almost musical. They make a distinct sound in such a way that half the office floor knows when I'm refilling the jar from my bulk bags.
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January 10, 2007
Ground rules for My Year Without Chocolate
You may be wondering what the rules are for me in this endeavor. Simple: Make it through 2007 without chocolate.
More specifically:
- No finger dipping in someone else's dessert
- No beater licking
- No batter bowl sampling
- No sample spoons
- No five-seconds-on-the-floor rule
- No crumb inhaling
- White chocolate – well, I don't really know what that is, but I'll say no for now.
- Smelling is okay. I am allowed to inhale.
- Looking at pictures of chocolate online is okay.
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Chocolate newspaper
I was eating my blueberry oatmeal this morning, happily free from chocolate temptation, when I looked at the front page of our local newspaper (full disclosure: it's owned by E.W. Scripps, parent company of Scripps Networks, majority owner of Food Network).
It had a picture of a big mug of hot chocolate to promote a story about how to turn it from ordinary to extraordinary.
I found 76 recipe search results for "hot chocolate" on FoodNetwork.com.
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January 9, 2007
Flaming chocolate
We went out to Famous Dave's for barbecue dinner with friends tonight. Their 12-year-old daughter said she didn't see how anyone could make it a year without chocolate!
We were still celebrating my son's 7th birthday, so the waitress brought him a brick-sized slice of brownie with vanilla ice cream. It was topped with chocolate syrup and a flaming sparkler. She also brought spoons for the whole table. I had to put my spoon on the table away from me just so I wouldn't reach for some of his dessert out of habit.
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January 8, 2007
Chocolate is following me!
I caught someone following me to work today with chocolate. I was sitting at a traffic light and noticed the woman in the car behind me was eating a chocolate bar and having a soft drink for breakfast.
Next, I got to work and soon heard people talking outside my door about some exotic Hershey's kisses someone was sharing.
Later, I walked past a cubicle and saw a big jar of chocolate candies that I had never noticed when I was eating chocolate back in 2006 (you know, eight days ago).
While I was heating up my Lean Pocket for lunch, I noticed the overflowing bins of hot chocolate mix we keep beneath our microwave oven in the break room.
It's all around me!
One of our IT Operations folks who set up this blog is betting I fall off the wagon in a month.
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January 7, 2007
Mount Chocula
We came home and celebrated my son's 7th birthday. My wife made a chocolate volcano cake about 10 inches tall with chocolate frosting and fire-breathing dragons on top, just like my son requested weeks ago. The dragons are toys and we put a candle in each mouth. This cake was a work of art and science. You are looking at cake piled upon cake with a lot of homemade icing as mortar (and two wooden skewers) to hold it together. She had to remove a drawer from the refrigerator just to make it fit.
But I didn't have any since I'm on a break from chocolate for 2007. I scooped the Rocky Road ice cream and passed plates around for everyone, making sure to not get a bit of chocolate on my hands. Then I had vanilla ice cream and some of the non-chocolate lava frosting that I scraped off the volcano. As I predicted, it was tasty, but I didn't crave seconds since it wasn't chocolate. Ordinarily, I would have seconds on birthday cake right then and probably thirds sometime before bed.
Sandra, my wife, said I should stop buying any chocolate for the family, but I said I want to show that I control the chocolate and the chocolate doesn't control me! Who's in control? I am! In my MBA class, we just learned this thinking is called "internal locus of control." It reminds me of what I was taught years ago as self-efficacy.
By the way, if you ever decide to put a plastic dragon on a cake and light a candle in its mouth, take the picture quickly.
Seven days down!
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