A month without chocolate

It doesn’t really have a thing to do with Lent, although the timing is such that several people have suggested there’s a connection. My reasons for giving up chocolate in all forms for 30 days starting on March 17 were numerous, but Catholic tradition was decidedly not among them.

Regardless of the motivations, once I made the decision, I was curious to see just how difficult it would be to honor this pact with myself.

Now I’m 27 days in, and the answer is that it hasn’t been all that difficult at all, and the rewards have been significant. I didn’t give up sweets altogether, just chocolate itself, but I do typically indulge in a lot of treats and confections, and chocolate is almost always an ingredient, so doing this has cut down significantly on my dessert intake. Still, this really wasn’t about weight loss or nutrition; it was more just about shaking up the status quo. I felt like I was turning to chocolate every time I needed a gastronomic reward; this was a chance to give up some not-so-great habits (such as the bag of M&M’s every time I drive home from the supermarket) and challenge myself to do things differently.

Since giving up chocolate nearly four weeks ago, I’ve eaten a lot of vanilla crème wafers and a lot of marshmallows. Giving up sugar itself would be a lot harder for me; I don’t care that much about the chocolate itself as long as I can have a cookie or dish of ice cream now and then, and avoiding the chocolate varieties compelled me to be more experimental. The first time my family went out for ice cream during the chocolate fast, I had peppermint stick; the second time I had buttercrunch. One day at home I ate frozen shredded coconut to satisfy a craving for sweets; another time I melted white chocolate chips and stirred in broken pretzels to make a sweet-and-salty bark. (Semantics aside, white chocolate is not technically chocolate, I decided at the outset. Any confectioner would support this distinction, I believe.)

What I miss is homemade chocolate chip cookies, both in batter and baked form. My family misses these as well, as we generally have a steady supply of homemade cookies in the house, so yesterday afternoon I made oatmeal cookies, minus the chocolate chips. Like me, Rick and the kids feel less tempted by sweets when chocolate isn’t an option, so we’ve all been eating a little bit more sensibly during the chocolate fast.

It’s over in three days, but I’m not anticipating any great breaking-of-the-fast. My mother was in Europe last month and brought me back a box of chocolates which I’m looking forward to trying, and I do look forward to the wider selection of ice cream options that eating chocolate affords me. In general, though, the chocolate fast has been valuable simply as a way of shaking things up and making me more deliberate in my food choices. It wasn’t for Lent; it really wasn’t religious at all. It was just an easy, tangible avenue to a temporary change in behavior. Even if I can’t articulate a significant number of benefits that resulted, I’m glad I tried it.

Favorite traditions: Making candy for Christmas

This weekend we’ll start making Christmas candy.

Well, I will, anyway. My use of the plural first-person might be a little optimistic. I’m hoping that the kids will find it enough fun that they’ll want to help out, but if not, I’m happy to do it on my own.

December is the only time of year that I make candy, and I make a lot of it, because it’s my favorite gift to give. I’ve never been a big fan of cookie assortment plates as gifts, although I do think they look very nice at parties. Last week I gathered with a dozen friends for a cookie exchange; everyone went home with numerous varieties of cookies that other people had made, and I’m going to use my take to make up a plate for an event we’re hosting this weekend. But in general, I find cookie plates kind of unappealing if they require packing and transporting. I don’t like the way the cookies all slide around on the plate or the way the flavors mix: peanut butter next to mint next to almond next to molasses.

What I do like about candy is that it feels so genuinely festive to me. I do far more baking all year long than I probably should from a caloric standpoint; we’re almost never without a batch of homemade cookies or brownies in the house, and it’s not unusual for an afternoon snack or weeknight dessert at our house to include cupcakes, biscuits, muffins or any number of other rich treats. But I make candy only during the Christmas season.

I make truffles from a recipe we’ve had since my childhood. Really they are faux truffles, more like little balls of fudge: chocolate and butter and confectioner’s sugar. But they look so pretty rolled in cocoa and tucked into a small candy box. My mother gave me a new recipe last year for peanut brittle which takes five minutes to make and is delicious, so I’ll make that as well. Two years ago a friend who made the best toffee I’ve ever tasted for our church fair gave me her recipe for that, and I added it to my repertoire. The Crate & Barrel holiday catalog gave me the idea to make white chocolate bark studded with chopped candy cane pieces, which adds some variety of color for my candy medley. Then maybe some peanut butter buckeyes to round out the collection.

None of these is complicated or even necessarily very authentic within the realm of candy making. None even requires a candy thermometer. But candy is a novelty to me, one of the few culinary treats that I restrict myself to once a year. In the past, I’ve made baked goods along with candy for gifts for my kids’ teachers; we’ve filled baskets with cookies, breads, scones, muffins. This year I think we’ll skip the baked goods. They’re more time-consuming and require more clean-up. (For some reason I cannot seem to take out flour in my kitchen without creating an instant mess.) Not everyone necessarily likes candy, but I figure the people we give it to can enjoy it or serve it to guests or regift it.

So it will be a candy-making weekend, no doubt full of sampling since that’s an integral part of the cooking process for me. Once a year it can’t hurt too much. We’ll find holiday-themed containers to pack them in and the kids will take them to school the day before vacation when everyone brings in teacher gifts. I acknowledge that I may enjoy the candy ritual far more than any of the beneficiaries do, but that’s okay. Part of what makes this time of year special is returning to favorite traditional annual activities, and for me, rolling 300 truffles in cocoa is all part of the merriment of the season.