Confection and absolution

It's 10 AM, and I'm sitting at my desk chomping on the chocolates my wife sent with me. I'm supposed to be sharing these with coworkers — and maybe I will... eventually... if they're nice — but damn.

Maus, who has Wonka blood, has been on a chocolatiering tear for the last year and a half, and the yield has been prodigious, bordering on surreal. She forklifts in crated slabs of chocolate (which she breaks up with a chisel and sledgehammer), and cranks out perfect little confections by the gross. And then she lovingly paints them, one by one.

Right now I'm working on a large glob of gooey caramel-chocolate truffle the size of a ping-pong ball, sprinkled in sea salt. Jeet Sweesus! I'm trying to lay off the golden, glittering coffee-Sambuca ones, at least until this afternoon, as the morning's double-shot is already coursing through my veins, and with all the added sugar, I'm only a nudge away from overturning my desk in violent, barbaric glee as it is.

This is my life. And, as is my Valentine's Day custom, tonight I shall “repay” this amazing woman by cooking a meal so ridiculously beyond my capacity that it's quite likely I will blow up the house, and all the chocolate therein. Which, if nothing else, will be a good show for the neighbors.