Review: Chocoholics Anonymous courtesy of Green & Blacks

Own up now. Don’t be shy. We’ve all done it, we’ve all been there. My name’s Tattie Weasle and I’m a chocoholic.

I’ve lied, cheated and stolen for my addiction and yes, I did eat some of my children’s Easter eggs without telling them. In fact, I am ashamed to admit some Easter eggs never actually arrived at their destination. Well, come on! The Boy got three Cadbury’s Mini Egg Easter Eggs and he’d have been sick if he had had them all! I was doing my motherly duty and saving him from himself…it’s true!

My addiction is so bad that when there is chocolate in the house I cannot sit still until I have eaten it. All of it. Only at that point can I relax.

With most other things I am a sharing sort of person but with chocolate that is not the case. Dear Charlie has been known to ask me if there is any chocolate in the house so he can have a bit with his tea just before bedtime. I have responded with the no I am sorry excuse, at the same time as stuffing my face with the last few pieces.

It’s not that I don’t love my husband, it’s just that, well, I obviously love chocolate more. So imagine my consternation when my husband was the one who opened a huge packet addressed to me only to find 11 bars of chocolate in it courtesy of Green & Blacks! There was no way I could hide the evidence and surreptitiously eat it at my leisure in the dead of night when the rest of the family was sleeping. Now I had to share.

Deciding that my best bet was to save myself from myself, I virtuously announced that as there was so much chocolate we’d all do the taste test that Green & Blacks had so kindly suggested. I had already noted that they had said each person should restrict themselves to only a couple of squares of each chocolate and I calculated that between the four of us technically only eight squares of each bar would be eaten leaving the rest, well available for future reference…

I think I was a little to obvious in my greed for Dear Charlie suggested very firmly that we should invite a whole load of friends over for a tasting the following Friday. OK. All well and good, but the following Friday was a week away and how on earth was I going to prevent myself from eating the chocolate before then? For every packet would have to be pristine on the night. I couldn’t just break it into bits in bowls because Dear Charlie would know that I had been at it.

It was a difficult week. It was an expensive week. For there was no way I could not eat the chocolate and every night the chocolate was checked to make sure it was all there an accounted for. Basically what happened was that he’d leave for work at 6am and by 7am the chocolate would have been opened and a few chunks devoured. The bar would then be hastily removed upstairs to my bedroom where it would be secreted in a little hidey hole in my wardrobe form whence I could snatch a couple of chunks throughout the day just to keep me going. I would then have to replace the bar with a new one bought from the local supermarket. Unfortunately for me some days did not work out so well. Like the time I took the Cherry one – I don’t like cherries and trying to buy a replacement saw me travel from Stowmarket to Bury St Edmunds in a desperate race against time one late afternoon to get the another back in the draw before he returned from London.

By the time Friday came round I was slightly manic and to be honest not really looking forward to an evening of chocolate. I think it was the guilt.

As well as eating chocolate I had also been given cooking chocolate. The whole meal was going to be based on chocolate. If it’s pudding you are after then Green & Blacks have some amazing recipes but if you want to have savoury dishes then, that is a little trickier.

However, as I said I’m a chocoholic and I now give you, the until now, heavily guarded secret of my gravy, my rich meat pies, the je ne sais quois of my hot pots; for years I have been using dark chocolate in a host of dishes, the best of which, is of course, Chilli Con Carne.

If you want to make your meat sauces just that little bit richer add a few cubes of dark chocolate the higher the cocoa content the better though for many an 85% will be a bit bitter. A good 70% will do perfectly and the nice thing I found out about Green & Blacks is that even at its highest cocoa content it is never bitter.

The evening was brilliant and we all followed the Green & Blacks Chocolate Tasting Rules and had a total blast. I will admit I have not had such fun in ages and I would be quite willing to share my chocolate again, perhaps, sometime in the future…maybe…

Green & Blacks Tasting Rules

In preparation…

• Ensure your chocolate is at room temperature.

• Limit yourself to around six different chocolate varieties. Allow roughly two squares per person. Any more will give you tasting fatigue.

• Start with the lightest variety, e.g. White, and finish with the darkest, e.g. Dark 85%

As you taste…

• Observe the appearance of the chocolate as chocolates vary in colour. Like wine, intensity of colour does not necessarily indicate intensity of flavour.

• Smell the chocolate. Take a small piece and let it melt between your thumb and forefinger. It is only then that you experience the aromas that we usually describe as flavours.

• Taste the chocolate. Put the first piece in your mouth and pinch your nose. Pinching your nose lets your tongue and mouth truly experience the tastes and other sensations perceived in the mouth, as opposed to flavour, which is perceived by the olfactory gland in the nasal canal. The tastes your tongue can detect are salt, sweet, sour, bitter and umami (a savoury taste); and the sensations and textures your mouth can detect include astringency and the cooling effect of the cocoa butter.

• Stop pinching your nose and breathe in deeply. You will immediately sense the aromas or flavours of the chocolate. This is because all these volatiles are already surrounding the olfactory gland. The deep breath of air just allows it to work properly.

• After you've tasted like this once, you can continue in this vein or taste in a more traditional way. By allowing the chocolate to melt slowly on the tongue one experiences the change and development of flavours as the cocoa butter melts and releases the volatiles.

• Give your guests water between samples to cleanse the palate.

We're all unique, so your tasting experience will be uniquely your own. Have fun comparing and contrasting your discoveries with others.

What we tasted:

White – Good vanilla tones, slightly salty

Creamy Milk- seemed almost burnt and milk powdery (to some but of course delicious to me!)

Buttersctoch – Better than a crunchy. Great choclately taste

Almond - almonds were amazing but the chocolate in comparison seemed bland and irrelevant

Ginger – to die for!

Cherry – the cherries were deliciously juicy (not what I thought but I was out voted) just like a Black Forest gateaux

Dark 70% - as dark chocolate should be!

Dark 85% - seriously strong but surprisingly smooth

Finally my recipe for Chill Con Carne (this is a bastardised version of the Waitrose one!)

Serves about 8

2lbs fully leaded minced beef none of this lean stuff

1 large onion, chopped

2/4 garlic cloves, chopped (some like it strong others don’t)

2 red chillis deseeded and all chopped up. Seriously try and avoid the seeds as they tend to be hot and bitter to the taste and rather unpleasant.

2 tsp hot chilli powder and a good pinch of coriander, ginger, cumin and cinnamon

Eight squares of dark chocolate, broken up as it melts better if you do that.

a big tin chopped tomatoes

A large dollop of tomato puree

2 ordinary tins of red kidney beans

Seasoning to taste

Put some oil in a big pan and fry off the onion and garlic being careful not to burn add the mince and keep going until it is all browned. Add the chilli and spices and tomato puree and cook until well flavoured then add everything else except the tinned tomatoes and kidney beans. I add the chocolate chunk by chunk and make sure it does not touch the bottom of the pan as it can burn if you are not careful.

Finally add the beans. Some people drain all the juices off the meat and add the beans then reduce the juice and re add it just before serving. I am far too lazy and just keep going with the cooking until it looks about right. I think this is because I don’t add stock with the tomatoes.

The salsa courtesy of Waitrose!

2 large, ripe avocados, roughly diced

4 large tomatoes, skinned, deseeded and diced

4 limes, juiced, and zest grated from 2

Handful of chopped fresh coriander

1 large green chilli, halved, deseeded and chopped

1 bunch spring onions, finely sliced

1 large red chilli, halved, deseeded and chopped

Chop all of it up, squeeze in the limes and hey presto seemples!!!!

Serve with all the accompaniments you like including cheese, sour cream and of course tortilla chips!

Bringing up Boys: Willies, wee and ritual humiliation

Boys are wonderful creatures really despite driving their mothers to distraction.

Mine just cannot seem to concentrate for longer than two seconds and decide to instigate inappropriate conversations when I cannot answer or when answering would mean that I have to somewhat embarrassingly acknowledge that yes they are my children rather than someone else’s.

The conversations usually run along the lines of sex - their view of it - or going to the loo, sometimes both. For example, there’s this one from The Boy aged six and three quarters. “Why does my willy go hard when I pee Mummy?” said only this Tuesday by the cheese counter at Waitrose.

There is the classic: “I know where babies come from…” said by eldest in East as he watched me and two larger ladies try on dresses – wait for it: “from fat people Mummy.”

Then there is Bog Boy saying he needs a wee while we look round the Lots at a very posh auction house. This is the first time he has announced this, I start to respond with a: “Are you sure?” but before I can finish he says: “It’s alright now Mummy, I’ve gone…” and I note the growing damp patch on the soft moss green carpet emanating from where he stands totally unfazed.

One begins to wonder whether taking children out is a good idea or whether one should opt for shopping on the internet until they are teenagers.

It’s not just when I am shopping and they are understandably bored but it happens that they suddenly demand attention when I am trying to turn right at a busy junction or am trying to negotiate my way across four lanes of terrifyingly fast moving traffic on the motorway, sometimes it’s happened in Museums, on trains, basically at moments when my attention is not really focussed on them.

They know I get cross and my response cannot be what they are really after but they are learning. If they really want to hit Mummy in the emotional solar plexus all they have to do is say: “Mummy, you’re the best mummy in the world!”

Usually after I have just barked at them in public just to ensure my ritual humiliation is total as well.

Unlooked for compliments down the frozen food aisle

I think I should be paid to go shopping. I mean I provide hours of entertainment up and down the aisles with my youngest in tow. Today I was caught in the middle of “The Dam Busters” theme tune as I sped up the frozen food aisle and about to do a massive halt and turn at the top by an elegant middle aged lady in a warm woolly hat.
Her: I do love seeing you and your boys shopping.
Me: !??%$£&!”
Her: You always seem to be having so much fun and you sing a lot.
Me: Ohmygod I am so sorry. I don’t mean to do it but…
Her: No no really it always makes my day to see happy people. It’s wonderful, really.
At this stage I am not sure whether I want to laugh, cry or just wish the floor to open up and swallow me. I had no idea I had a reputation or that in fact anyone even knew me in Waitrose. It’s just as well the branch I go to is 12 miles from home.
I suppose today I was rather loud. Bog Boy had his own little ‘Flag Trolley’, as he calls it, and we were both whizzing up and down the aisles and trying to spin at the top. I don’t think you can do this in Tesco because there’s not enough room to do that but Waitrose believes in making the shop seem spacious and calm (until we turn up obviously) so the top aisle that runs across is much wider than that found at Tesco or indeed Sainsbury’s; I’m not sure about Asda or Morrison’s because I haven’t shopped in either of them for years.
Anyway, all would have been OK if Bog Boy hadn’t kept bumping into me. Now when one of those trolleys comes at you and rams into your Achilles heel you yell – loudly! He did it three times.
Despite that we shopped quite companionably chattering away and singing. He tells me what he doesn’t like and I tell him well tough it’s not for you anyway. He then tells me what he does like and I still say tough without thinking and then we have a stand off. Through a series of threats, ultimatums, distraction techniques (hence the singing) and bribery we eventually get round the store. Along the way there are a variety of one liners for the grown ups so they don’t think I am a complete lunatic. I usually get a laugh or smile but there again perhaps they do think I am a lunatic and are just doing it to placate me…
However, no one has ever said anything to me before and to say I was taken aback would be an understatement. I mean we’re British, we’re in Britain and people don’t volunteer compliments to strangers do they? So I was flummoxed, taken off guard and momentarily quiet. At that point Bog Boy joined us smiled up at the lady and promptly told her he had got a remote controlled racing car for Christmas and then told me he wanted sausages and could he eat them in the car?
I looked at the proffered package of uncooked chipolatas and said I’d need to cook them first. He handed them to me and then said he’d have crisps instead and that he wanted a drink.
Me: Oh heaven’s he’s worse than his father!
Her: Don’t worry they all are! Just remember they are apprentice men: genetically challenged!
And with a cheery wave she disappeared in the other direction to the check out till.
By this time Bog Boy was off down the cereal aisle and I had to play catch up feeling rather light headed and happy. Needless to say Bog Boy got what he wanted!

The case of the Missing Prawns (or the wickedest whippet in the world strikes again...)

Arrghhh!
I thought I was being so clever this evening but she’s gone and done it again. My pesky whippet puppy has eaten all my prawns – and I hope she gets a very poorly tummy. Though saying that, if she does she will probably land up regurgitating the whole lot on my bed knowing my luck!
Oohhh!
I had been very indulgent and had bought - dare I say it? - a ready-made Chinese meal the other day. Beef and Black bean sauce, egg fried rice and crispy prawns with sweet chilli sauce courtesy of those goodly people at Waitrose. I was so looking forward to it, wrong we were both SO looking forward to it.
This evening I had it all sorted. Dear Charlie was soaking in a bath trying to warm up – poor chap is feeling a bit crook and awful cold. I was going to surprise him with a real treat, which we could eat in front of X Factor.
Everything was done for once and I was ahead of myself. The children were fed and in bed, chickens were all shut up for the night, laundry was done, table already laid for breakfast, washing up done. All I had to do was slam the dinner into the oven for 25 minutes and Bob’s your proverbial Uncle.
However, the prawns did not take as long as the sauce to cook. The idea being that you place the sauce in first then half way through place the prawns on a baking tray separately so they don’t go soggy.
So what to do with the prawns for the seven minutes before you place them in the oven? Of course, put them on a separate baking tray and leave them on the kitchen counter high enough, you think, to be out of reach of the dogs.
I hadn’t counted on EBJ’s tenacity had I? Nor on her ability to problem solve. In fact I keep forgetting she has a brain. I must admit it is not one of her most attractive qualities. The other whippets are blissfully brainless – that or they have better manners and/or are not quite so greedy.
However, I leave the kitchen for a few moments to check on Dear Charlie and tell him supper will only be ten minutes, and when I return everything seems fine. Nothing has moved, there are no tell tale marks to indicate anything is wrong. The baking tray is where I have left it but because I don’t go right up to it I fail to notice that there is nothing there until it is time to place the prawns in the oven and they are gone, not a crumb has been left. For a few moments I am bewildered. I question my actions and run through exactly what I did and come up with the conclusion that I must have put the prawns in the fridge. But they are not there. I am genuinely puzzled because there seems to be no way the dog could possibly have half inched those prawns without making an awful lot of fuss or else flying and I had heard nada, nothing, not a dicky bird. I only left the kitchen for two minutes - if that.
But as the Great Sherlock Holmes stated “when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth”.
All I can say is, I have no idea how she could have done it. She is not a cat and to have leapt up 90cms to land on top of the counter which is only 30cms in depth without breaking anything or pushing anything off is incredible.
By a process of elimination I can hazard a guess as to how she might have achieved it but the complexity of the solution seems a bit beyond a ten-month-old whippet.
However this is what I think she did: she walked away from the counter top to the other side of the table where there was a chair slightly pushed out. She climbed on the chair and jumped onto the tabletop. She then walked along the table and jumped about half a metre onto the counter the other side of the oven from where the prawns were sitting. She then walked back along the counter, jumped over the hob without knocking over any of the pans upon it and ate the prawns on the baking tray. Then she retraced her steps. And quietly curled up in her basket.
If it wasn’t for the fact that she happened to have a few tell tale crumbs round her muzzle and for once looked particularly guilty when I glared at her, I swear I would never have known.
I am afraid I reprimanded her for all of two seconds. She seemed so abjectly sorry and it is so out of character for her to show any remorse at all that she was swiftly forgiven.
Dear Charlie mutters that the dog is a serious weasel and is not to be trusted ever and that this is just another ruse to add to her repertoire. Needless to say I suspect he is right. But she’s so cute…

I love children but I couldn’t manage a whole one…

When I was younger, child free and lived in London I never noticed children per se - a bit like in movies they just weren’t seen, let alone heard. That is, unless they became the focus of attention.
In London this would be brought painfully to my attention especially if I was late for work. I would find myself caught up in the school run trapped between dark blue Volvos and sleek grey Mercedes as they cruised shark like for the elusive parking spot closest to the school gates slewing from either side of the road as I cycled furiously so as not to be squashed into the kerb.
At other times I would find myslef having to brake and veer wildly as the Mummies opened their car doors oblivious to other road users while they businy hauled out a well scrubbed and matching pair of blonde bobbed juniors to plonk them with a sigh of relief at their corresponding educational establishments.
On other occasions it would be the screaming child at Peter Jones in the glassware department near the spiral staircase right next to the front entrance or horrors in the middle of Sainsbury’s at Nine Elms. How I stared, how I tutted and shook my head or else averted my gaze so as not to embarrass the poor lone mother already heavily weighed down with a paraphernalia of parcels, plastic bags and for good measure another mewling infant on the verge of eruption.
The poor mother would have to cope in ever growing isolation and you’d hear pleadings, sobs, and bribery all in a desperately hushed whisper. Occasionally mother would explode startling children and shoppers alike but it had the desired affect. To be honest I have no idea what is the best policy in those situations. I think in myself satisfied single life - as it was then – I believed that of course I would do it better. Today I was well and truly hoisted by my own petard.
It all started off so well, we found a space to park, we got a trolley, we got into the store and we even started to get shopping but from then on in it was an unmitigated disaster.
The Boy: I’m hungry!
Me: You’ll have to wait darling…
The Boy: I want a banana
Me: I said you’ll have to wait - it won’t be long
The Boy: Look Mummy a pineapple – I want a pineapple!
Me: No love we don’t need one of those
The Boy: Why not?
Me: They’re not ripe yet (and they’re too expensive.)
The Boy: Look Mum! Strawberries!
What strawberries in January? English??!!! Oh from Peru
Me: How lovely Darling but we’re not having those…
The Boy: Why not?
Me: They have come too far love we need to get food that is grown in season
The Boy: But if they’re here they’ve grown haven’t they? So they’re in season…
Can’t fault the logic can you?
It carried on like this wanting things, whining about things because he could not have them until at last frustrated by the fact that for some unknown reason there was no milk I told him to be quiet or there would be no Gingerbread Man treat for him.
OH FOOLISH, FOOLISH WOMAN!!!
The Boy stood there and dissolved into the most heart-rending picture of an angel being told it would never get to heaven. The sobs tore at your very soul right there in the dairy aisle slap bang in the middle of Waitrose on a busy Wednesday afternoon.
I was dumbfounded, out paced and totally out of my depth. I began to wonder if I had been a little too harsh - perhaps I was a little rough when I said the big N.O.
I put my arms around him only for the sobs to get worse and turn to wailing nay keening. The Littlest stared at his brother in awe and catching my eye silently held out his arms for a cuddle pleading for reassurance as the wails got more and more wild and his brother’s shoulders started to quake – it was all getting rather out of hand and the crowd was getting uncomfortably large. I was furious, the little bugger was making a total show I longed to give him a short sharp slap across his behind and everyone was starting to stare and mutter I glared at them all and then back at the source of it all who was now beginning to hiccough uncontrollably. So I started to clap and holler: “Oh well done lovely, marvellous darling – the show’s over now and we’ll collect your Oscar at the checkout!”
I don’t think The Boy quite expected that and I have no idea where it came from but snatching an opportune moment I grabbed his arm and stormed off past the cheese and round the corner into the frozen aisles where it was a little less crowded. Hissing at him I warned him that if he ever tried that on again… but faltered what would I do? Luckily he had been taken by surprise and had gone very quiet. We were given a wide berth, which annoyed me even more.
I marched purposefully around doing the last bits of the shopping trailing a quietly crying child overhearing the occasional snuffle and mutter from him. The Littlest was silent taking it all in clutching his Jelly Cat in one hand and my sleeve with the other.
Dignity just about intact I made it to the cashiers’ desk and out of shop – oh the relief!!!
We were all very quiet on the journey home.