Wednesday, December 6, 2023: My Favorite Thing # 8

Dark Chocolate!

Welcome, I’m Mary Louisa Locke, the author of the USA Today best-selling Victorian San Francisco Mystery series and the Caelestis Science Fiction series. In this daily newsletter, I reflect on my life as an indie author trying to age gracefully, including my struggles to maintain a balanced life, what I listen to, read, and watch for entertainment, and occasional bits of information I’ve gleaned from doing the research for my novels. Currently in the last weeks of the year I am listing some of my favorite things!

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Daily Diary, Day 1191:

The story behind Dark Chocolate as one of my favorite things is that I have had a long but complicated history of with chocolate. Growing up, I didn’t have chocolate very often because my mother was allergic (she got very bad migraines) so we didn’t tend to have things like chocolate cake or chocolate chip cookies. I don’t know that she would have forbade it, but constitutionally, I have difficulty enjoying something that someone else can’t have. I certainly wouldn’t have wanted her to make me something (like a chocolate birthday cake) that she couldn’t eat. So, my birthday cakes were always spice cakes, which I liked. But between you and me, I would have preferred a cake with at least chocolate icing.

Of course, once I was off to college, I could have all the chocolate I wanted. And did.

As an aside, I noticed that my father reacted the same way after my mother died. He started binging on chocolate, particularly once the memory loss that came with his Alzheimer’s meant he didn’t even feel guilty about doing so. In his last years, every time I visited, I would take him out to get a hot fudge sundae, and the woman who ran the care home once told me that all she had to do when he got agitated was offer him chocolate pudding. One of the most precious memories of these years is the one time I took him to visit my daughter and her family and the absolute glee in his eyes when they offered him some kind of sugary, all chocolate cereal for breakfast still warms my heart.

Anyway, like my father, released from the quilt of having something my mother couldn’t have, I discovered that my favorite desserts usually had chocolate in them. I loved plain milk chocolate bars as a snack, and hot fudge sundaes for special occasions. In the evenings, when my husband and I watched TV before bed, we had a bowl of ice cream, usually HaagenDaz’ Vanilla chocolate chip.

My favorite cookies were chocolate chip cookies, and for decades, the Christmas cookies I made each year for us and others were something I call snowball cookies—essentially a chocolate chip cookie with walnuts, rolled in powdered sugar. In addition, as part of our holiday cooking my husband makes a lovely fudge, and chocolate truffles.

But I cannot have any of these goodies anymore, and haven’t been able to for at least 8 years. (I’m quite sure I shouldn’t have been having any of these desserts for decades because of a previously undiagnosed condition—but, oh well.)

In short, for my health and well-being, I’ve had to cut out all the chocolate-based desserts I was used to, because I even discovered that I couldn’t tolerate desserts made with artificial sweetners, either.

I see it as a strong test of my character that I don’t resent the fact that the house is filled with the most delicious scent of chocolate during the holidays!

However, the nutritionist I saw to help me figure out what I could eat, made a strong argument for me working hard to find things I do like that will give me joy so I wouldn’t feel deprived. That was what was the impetus for me creating a salad that is another one of my favorite things.

When I bemoaned not being able to have my bowl of ice cream at night, she made the suggestion that I have a bowl of plain, non-fat yogurt, with a tiny bit of sweetness from stevia (which I can tolerate), walnuts, and some shaved dark chocolate.

And, like my salad, this has become a staple for me that I have every day, completely satisfying my desire for a little bit of sweetness. However, you will notice I didn’t say my favorite thing was my yogurt snack, but instead, just dark chocolate.

In fact, I started out not liking dark chocolate. SO BITTER! The only way I tolerated it was to have a tiny bit shaved on my yogurt, where the sweetness from the stevia hid the taste. However, over time I learned that years of no sugar, honey, or even sweet fruit in my diet changed my tastebuds. As a result, the dark chocolate no longer tastes bitter. In fact, it started to taste sweet. Sweet enough that I started having small pieces of of dark chocolate after lunch, after dinner, and instead of shaving it on the yogurt, having a piece separately so I could fully enjoy it.

Now, I don’t go overboard. I have very small pieces (about 30 calories worth), and it is 90% cocoa, (85% is too sweet!), and that completely satisfies my sweet tooth and desire for chocolate. Funny story, one afternoon my husband came into the kitchen, concerned, and said, “Are you all right!” Turned out he had heard me moan and thought I was in pain. But what I had done was unconsciously moaned in pleasure as one of those pieces of dark chocolate was melting in my mouth!

In short, dark chocolate is now one of my favorite things!

So do you have a favorite dessert that makes you moan with pleasure?

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