Day 56: Eight and a Half Bars

Three batches of chocolate brownies.  I've never made them before.  A first.  Like yesterday's clementine-boiling.  I don't consider myself a sissy, but I pale at the obscene quantities of chocolate and butter.  There's something deeply disturbing about any recipe that requires 185g of both, against a paltry 85g of flour.  All in all I used five and a half bars of plain chocolate, one and a half of milk, and one and a half of white.  EIGHT AND A HALF BARS.  And almost a whole tub of cocoa.  By the time the third batch goes in (a long-drawn out process as I only have one suitable baking tin), I have a chocolate fume-induced fever.  I am a drugged drone.  Chop the chocolate.  Melt the chocolate.  Stir the chocolate.  Cook the chocolate.  Chop the chocolate.  Melt the chocolate.  Stir the chocolate.  Cook the chocolate.  Chock the chopolate.  Chock the meltolate.  Chock the stirolate.  Chock the cookolate. 

Finally I am done.  Probably the very best aversion therapy available.  Eyes glazed I turn my attention to the raspberries.   Five bags of them (frozen).   I heat them with sugar and lemon juice, and then sieve.  For ever.  And ever.  Twice through the big mesh.  Twice through the fine mesh.  Who knew sieving could be such hard work?  In kitchen job terms, I guess it's on a par with turning a spit.  Or in Cinderella terms, picking lentils out of ash.  The kitchen looks like the set of a very niche film.  All is covered in spatters of raspberry gore and faecal smears of chocolate (told you it was aversion therapy).   Cleaning the kitchen feels spiritual.  (I will  probably never even THINK that sentence again, it's so foreign to me.) 

I have dedicated all the daylight hours to chocolate, like some suburban Aztec, so it's a dark drive to Suffolk.  Beyond Essex the big radio stations start fuzzing up and dropping off.  To be replaced by local stations - my favourite is Garrison FM, an army station that barks 'Be the best!' and advertises skills training for 'civvy street' in between relentless market town Friday night club choons.  

Mandy's birthday, so everything is far more extreme than the night before New Year's Eve has any decent right to be.  At two-thirty in the morning I find myself wearing a luggage label with my name on it, attached to a button on my cardigan.  It was tied to my wine glass at dinner - a groovy name place thing.  I have decided to wear it, in case I become 'lost'.  (Spiritually, emotionally, causally - but mostly geographically, as the house is rambling and intricate).  Safely labelled, I am weighing Daisy's ears (floppy, heavy, silky) to see which is heavier.  I realise that the 'lost' refers to the powers of speech and balance.  Oh dear.  Roll on New Year's Eve...