when everyone else is spring-bound…

Homemade Kahlua Ice Cream and Dark Chocolate Gelato
sans Ice Cream Maker

This winter, a friend I met in Vermont last year, sent me a CD with a collection of the songs he had written about in his work. Amongst them was a song called After All  by songwriter Dar Williams.

I won’t forget the first moment I first heard After All – track number five on the CD. I was driving home from a cold, snowy winter hike with my dog. The roads were snow-covered and the sky was white with falling snow. From the moment Dar Williams’ voice filled my car, I felt a physical tug in my heart. 

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over-thinking love

“You don’t have to think about love; you either feel it or you don’t.”

~ from Like Water for Chocolate by Laura Esquivel

a recipe for happiness – tiramisu

This post also appeared in my column, Fresh Perspective in Kingston This Week on December 20, 2012.

I spent a good portion of 2012 getting back on my feet after a couple of tumultuous, challenging years fighting my way through an intense emotional quagmire devoid of much happiness. Things happen and sometimes life knocks us down. My guess is that this can happen to any of us sometimes striking with little warning and leaving us completely derailed.

assorted chocolate bugs

Last night, in Vermont, where I’m spending a month, we were hunkered down awaiting the approach of Hurricane Sandy.

Vermont Governor Peter Shumlin had called a state of emergency in advance of the storm and ordered in 250 extra line crews from other states and Canada to deal with possible power outages.

chocolate spectrum disorder: individual molten chocolate cakes

It’s been a while since my last chocolate post – a decent and reasonable amount of time – safe for a new chocolate recipe, I think.

I am way too attracted to chocolate and sweets in general. In fact, I empathize with a Lithuanian chocolate maker, who described himself as a chocolate lunatic. Subsequently I’ve decided lunatic is a bit harsh – as a friend pointed out – it’s more of a chocolate spectrum disorder.

the call of the wild: lakes, loons, and s’mores

Yesterday I woke just before dawn to the sound of loons calling. I’d heard them the night before too, and the nights before that, as I fell asleep in my tent. There’s something so reassuring about the beautiful, mournful wail of the loon – the haunting lullaby of the wild.

I was fifteen kilometres down a lake or two, one beaver dam, and two portages into Killarney Provincial Park in Northern Ontario, and just over 700 kilometres from my home, on a Wild Women Expedition. This was my second trip with the all-women outdoor adventure company, who are less about ‘women going wild’ than they are about getting women into the wild.

chocolate lunacy

It’s not over ‘til the chocolate course is served…

On her multi-award winning food site, Chocolate and Zucchini, Parisian foodie Clotilde Dusoulier recently interviewed a Lithuanian chocolate maker who is a self-described “chocolate lunatic.”

Perfect, I thought, that’s me!  I’m not fond of labels but chocolate lunatic is one I can live with. I’m sure chocolate lunacy is a spectrum disorder and I’m definitely somewhere on the spectrum. The Lithuanian chocolate maker is also a chocolate snob but that’s not something I suffer from. Almost any chocolate will suffice.