{"id":4490,"date":"2016-07-04T11:23:06","date_gmt":"2016-07-04T11:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=4490"},"modified":"2016-07-04T11:23:06","modified_gmt":"2016-07-04T11:23:06","slug":"chocs-away","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/?p=4490","title":{"rendered":"Chocs away"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Ganache<\/a>

Ganache de chocolate\/Louise Contreras\/flickr<\/p><\/div>\n

I blame the Aztecs. There\u2019s a great line in the Beatles\u2019 song \u2018I\u2019m so tired\u2019<\/em>, when John Lennon sings:<\/p>\n

\u2018I\u2019ll have another cigarette, and curse Sir Walter Raleigh, he was such a stupid get\u2019..<\/p>\n

Well I often feel the same way about the Aztecs; if they had not discovered just how useful cacao could be in improving their sex drive \u2013although the jury is still out on that one \u2013 then they wouldn\u2019t have told the Spanish about it, who in turn wouldn\u2019t have introduced it to Europe.\u00a0 And I wouldn\u2019t have a chocolate habit.<\/p>\n

When times are tough, I know where solace lies. It doesn\u2019t take much to cheer me up. Just one small, unassuming square of dark chocolate (minimum 70% cocoa solids) and the world is back on its axis. Or maybe two squares. Now I do know the dangers of addiction to any substance. Unlike Lennon I kicked the smoking habit in my early twenties, and I\u2019ve never been much of a drinker. But with chocolate I tell myself that this is different, I\u2019m in control, I can manage it. That\u2019s what addicts say, isn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n

Please understand that branded chocolate bars just don\u2019t cut the mustard \u2013 and indeed whoever heard of cutting mustard with a Bounty, Flake or Mars Bar? No, if it ain\u2019t the dark stuff I\u2019m not interested.<\/p>\n

And it\u2019s not just bars of chocolate. Some years ago I was on a walking holiday in northern Italy with a group of people who clearly took the whole thing much more seriously than I did, and leapt from rock to boulder with gay abandon.\u00a0 The walking was strenuous, but the views were fantastic. And then we got to our first \u2018refugio\u2019 in the hills, where we were stopping for lunch. The host produced bowls of pasta followed by cup after cup of rich, dark, thick, sticky hot chocolate. I was in heaven. The afternoon\u2019s walking passed easily; I was up there with the gazelles of the group, full of chocolatey energy.<\/p>\n

So imagine my delight a couple of years ago when we were visiting Barcelona, turned a corner and chanced upon the Museu de la Xocolata, or Museum of Chocolate<\/a>. Now that was fun. The displays take you through the history of chocolate and how the humble cocoa bean became a global industry. One of the rooms, the Sala Barcelona, has miniature chocolate models of famous buildings of Barcelona. Sadly they are behind glass; who would have thought I\u2019d have been tempted to nibble the Sagrada Familia?<\/p>\n

Not surprisingly, chocolate has inspired a number of films.\u00a0 Perhaps the most well-known is the film Chocolat<\/em> made in 2000, based on the novel by Joanne Harris, where a young, beautiful chocolatier arrives in rural France with her illegitimate daughter and helps to turn the village life upside down. I would urge people to check out the 1988 film of the same name, directed by Claire Denis and set in Cameroon. It explores themes of colonialism and social and sexual boundaries, and the term \u2018chocolat\u2019 in this case refers to 1950s slang, where the word means \u2018to be cheated\u2019.<\/p>\n

I feel confident that my old friend chocolate would never cheat on me.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

who would have thought I\u2019d have been tempted to nibble the Sagrada Familia?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":4499,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,55,53],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4490"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4504,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4490\/revisions\/4504"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4499"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4490"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4490"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/damesnet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4490"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}