For the Love of Chocolate

My name is Mommadods and I’m a chocoholic.

I have always been a chocolate lover.  My earliest memories of chocolate are of Hershey bars, those simple little treats of melt-in-your mouth goodness.  My mother used to give me a nickel to buy one at the drugstore before going to Hebrew School.  They used to come wrapped in foil with a paper wrapper that slipped over it securely.  It was possible to slide out the bar and eat it, then restore the three-dimensional wrappings to appear as if the bar was still there.  Unlike the modern Hershey bar, the bar of my youth sprang from a mold that spelled out H-E-R-S-H-E-Y in individual conjoined squares.   

I became drawn to things simply for their chocolateness—such as the chocolate iced cake in the school cafeteria—but nothing ever satisfied like a piece of Hershey’s chocolate.  I realize now that many of my attitudes toward chocolate were instilled by my parents.  I was taught that chocolate was the pinnacle of flavor; vanilla was an absence of flavor—a “non-flavor”—rather than a legitimate taste someone would choose willingly.  It was very much a cultural prejudice.  My parents were fond of pointing out that “only goyim eat vanilla.”  Years later, my darling yet gentile husband would tease them when we went out to dinner, always selecting the vanilla offering on the dessert menu.  It became our favorite inside joke.

But back to the chocolate.  I remember the day I first learned of Hershey’s Miniatures.  My mother bought a bag to serve at one of her weekly Mah Jongg games.  She let me try a “Special Dark” bar after school.  I thought I had entered another dimension.  Was it really possible—even legal—for a food to taste this rich and sinful?  Why were these offered so sparingly among the Mr. Goodbars and the Krackels?  Was it a rarity?  A controlled substance?  Why did it take decades to realize the need to produce this variety as its own bar for retail sale?

Slowly I descended into chocolate obsession.   There were many traps along the way.  The box of Whitman’s Samplers that occasionally graced our kitchen—having been delivered by some well-meaning friend or relative—was a case in point.  Under the enticingly homey cross-stitched cover was a selection of beautifully made little gems nestled in little cubbies.  Choose poorly, however, and you could find yourself with a mouthful of runny, gooey cherry glop with an overpowering fruit flavor.  In fact, many of Whitman’s tastes—coconut, Vermont maple fudge, molasses chew—contained fillings that overwhelmed the glory of their chocolate robes.  I learned to poke my little finger in the bottoms to check the contents before stealing one, learning to increase the odds that my crime of passion would pay.

Then there was the time I discovered those large chunky stashes of individual wax paper wrapped chocolate bars in the door of the refrigerator.  Safely alone in the house, I unwrapped one to enjoy with a glass of milk.  But the joke was on me:  Baker’s Chocolate!  What kind of warped cruelty was this?

Then one day an event occurred that would change my life forever, sealing my fate as a chocoholic.  My older brother developed an acute allergy to chocolate at a fairly young age.  He would break out in angry hives almost immediately all over his body.  In addition, his eyes would weep, causing him to wake with crusty eyelids.  The doctor told him he would need to eliminate chocolate from his diet, a fact that crushed him.  He could not cope with being the only one in the house who was banned from eating chocolate.  So my parents made a life-defining decision:  they involved the doctor in a medical sham.  At the next visit, they had him “diagnose me” as allergic to chocolate too.  I did not understand this, as I never displayed any of the telltale symptoms; nonetheless I was thereafter forbidden to eat chocolate under threat of punishment.

My parents were quite proud of their little charade.  They bragged frequently of their nefarious arrangement, premeditated to compensate my brother for his misfortune at my expense.   They boasted to family members and friends alike that I was not allergic at all, but that seeing me restricted from chocolate was a great comfort to my brother.   My parents did this within earshot, usually while they continued to stuff their faces with some beautiful chocolate confection. 

Knowledge is power.  I may have been restricted unfairly from eating chocolate at home, but it did not mean I could not eat it everywhere else.  Unlike my allergic brother, I could eat chocolate as I wished without developing the telltale allergic symptoms.  And eat I did.  I ate it with impunity at my friends’ homes and at birthday parties.  I scooped spoonful after spoonful of the abundant chocolate ice cream flavors from the freezer at every opportunity.  In high school, I frequently went across the street to the shopping center at lunchtime, always treating myself to a bit of something chocolate.  My only restriction was that I could not let my brother catch me with chocolate at school, as that would result in certain punishment at home.  Thus, I became not only a chocoholic but also a closet chocolate eater—a strange gift from parents who sought to ensure their son’s comfort and happiness at all costs.

Over the years, I have tried to cure myself of my chocolate obsession.  In college, I once bought two pounds of M & Ms and tried to force myself to overdose on them.  I ate nothing but M & Ms for an entire day, finishing the full two pound supply.  By midnight, I did not think I would ever eat another piece of chocolate.    Two days later, I was craving a Milky Way, depressed at my own failure.  Since then I have become the prototypical yo-yo dieter, alternating between Weight Watchers and Atkins regimes.  My key to success is a complete absence of chocolate.   Like a true addict, I cannot sustain just a small taste as I will soon require more and more.

I always hoped that my parents would let me off the hook by admitting openly to me and the rest of the family that they had perpetrated this chocolate hoax.  I thought that if they came clean, it would remove chocolate’s forbidden mystique, thus eliminating its lingering power to possess me.  Recently I confronted my mother with this in front of my husband and children, but she flatly refused to discuss it.

The good news is that age helps a bit.  Today I find that my chocolate tastes have changed.  I no longer need a daily dose of chocolate candy; I much prefer chocolate cake or mousse.  The cloying sweetness of chocolate ice cream finds no satisfaction on my tongue.  In restaurants, I often gravitate towards the non-chocolate desserts, now finding cinnamon-rich apple pie or apple crisp infinitely more appealing than the flourless chocolate torte.  Even in my own kitchen, I am likely to choose to make a key lime or pecan pie over anything chocolate.

Still the underlying need for chocolate never fully abates.  Just throw a few bumps in the road and I go blindly toward the chocolate.  It remains, as ever, a force greater than gravity.

Tomorrow's blog:  My Father the Car