My Preciousssss

Yet another snow day. I’m keeping busy reading The Hobbit to my 4- and 6-year old. If you are a Tolkien fan, you’re familiar with the “one ring to rule them all” and the hypnotic hold that ring has over anyone who comes into contact with it. Now I won’t pretend that chocolate has quite the same hold over me…but let’s just say at the start of this month, I was clutching my bag of goodies, hissing at anyone who came near it, much like Gollum with his precious ring deep in his cave.

So the fact that I willingly decided to share my chocolate today, with my little children no less, is an accomplishment and I think reflects how I’m starting to get a little more control over my cravings. What surprised me even more was how the kids were actually able to eat their piece of chocolate mindfully.

Of course when I announced that they were going to try mommy’s chocolate experiment and retrieved the bag from its hiding spot, they started to get a little delirious. “Dump it out!” they yelled, and I did, emptying the bag on the dining room table. They quickly ruled out anything with fruit or nuts, both of them choosing a dark chocolate square filled with caramel. I didn’t let them gulp it down. They had to look at it, smell it, and finally taste just a corner.

They didn’t know what expect. They have no experience with dark chocolate. If it had been a Hershey’s bar, I doubt they could have eaten it so slowly. But they didn’t have any expectations in this case. Didn’t know that when they bit into it, their faces would light up as the caramel hit their tongues and they discovered that this dark chocolate, which smelled like “coffee” would be wonderful. The other adjectives I heard, between bites, were “tart,” “chewy,” and “good.” (They aren’t exactly food critics.) The kids did so well that I promised them, if they could continue to eat thoughtfully like this, they could have a piece of my dark chocolate every day. We’ll see if this cuts down on any begging for sweeter desserts. Fingers crossed.