The Truffles Have Arrived
The picture above serves as evidence that the truffles made by Minstrel Boy of Harp and Sword have made it to their destination. The picture at left, below, shows that they are safely in the hands of the Dark Wraith, enshrouded as he is in shadow to conceal his true identity as he presents the trophy.
A few observations are in order. First, just looking at those beautiful things made my ass gain weight. Second, the first bite of the white chocolate truffle was a transcendent experience: the thing made my face throb with pleasure as I drew its succulence against my tongue and palate. I felt long-deprived fat cells come to life and rejoice as withered plants heaving back to the sky in the pouring rains after a decade of drought.After that first morsel, I lifted what remained of the bodacious creature up in the palm of my hand. I held it up high above my head so the angels in Heaven could see the pleasures of the land they, themselves, could never know; and I heard the angels weep, even as the demons of excess, of gluttony, of sheer abandonment of will swirled about me in an orgiastic cascade of heathen dance.
I ate more. Yes, I ate that entire white chocolate truffle with glee and gladness, for I had not eaten anything so sweet in so very long. I ate it all, and then I lay back in my chair and stared upward; and as my stomach began to churn from the unmitigated indulgence, and as my head began to beat like a kettle drum from the rush of sugar, I said, "I'm gonna die. Uh-huh, yes I am."
It was, in summary, the experience of a lifetime.
The Dark Wraith shall eat another one tomorrow evening.
Published 12/14/2006 12:17:00 AM
<< 17 Comments Total
Sigh.
Good Morning Dark Wraith,
First, Happy Blogiversary, BlogiBirthday, or whatever else ya want to call it! And thank you for all the work you've put in to make this one cool watering hole.
and now....
The truffles! Oh my, those look soooo good. Your eloquent description has my mouth watering for a drop of the chocolate. You've whet my chocolate addiction.
My daughter is making her yearly truffle extravaganza and shipping to us. We haven't yet recieved our X-mas truffles... oh woe. The good part is that this year her boyfriend is a chef, and he's promised to help her with them, so they'll be extra good this time. I soooo cannot wait!
I also spent some time admiring my delivery of hip enhancing truffles and will be enjoying my first one later this evening. I had a slice of red velvet cake earlier in the day and couldn't really appreciate the experience so I practiced some self control and will wait until my body has recovered before assaulting it with wondrous holiday treats.
It also helps that chocolate is not my favorite flavor and that they are a gift for my mom. Hidden in plain sight.
good morning dark wraith:
deb - self control and chocolate are not compatible. also, if your ideas on favorite flavors are formed around domestic (like ugh, milk chocolate) forms then you really haven't had the real thing. sorry about the thighs though. the truffle that has the light dusting of cinnamon contains nutmeg too, that puppy is psychoactive.
Happy Blogoversary DARK WRAITH!!
Oooooh, yummy.
Now...do I mean the truffles or the Dark Wraith? ;)
Dark Wraith, enough with the weight worries: you are a wraith, after all.
I'm telling everyone that I'll be trying my first truffle late tonight; perhaps I'll nibble it while watching Stephen Colbert. I daren't open the shipping carton yet, not until every last small Italian is deep asleep, lest I be attacked with Darth Vader light sabers and cake forks--mugged for my chocolate bounty.
I'm glad you took photos; the truffles are so pretty. Not that any of us will forget what they look like.
Good evening, litbrit.
Truth be told, they look a lot better in hand than in the pictures. They are large in comparison to the store-bought kind.
Also, when I bite through one of them, it's not a quick nip; it's more like plowing through a thick gelatin. I have so many cavities that things like chocolate hurt like the dickens, but Lord knows I persevered, which I would never do for just any plain old chocolate delight. That's one reason it's been so long since I've tried anything even remotely like this. I figure this might be the last time in my life I allow myself such an indulgence, so I'm savoring these with more than a small amount of joy.
I'll get rid of the weight gain they cause forthwith. Right now, I'm at 148 pounds (about 10½ stones), with a 30-inch waist, and I'll be darned if I'm going to let this holiday season do me in.
I keep thinking to myself that there's got to be an easier way to enjoy food without exploding, but so far the trick has eluded me.
I suppose I could sign up for monthly liposuction treatments, but that seems a little drastic. Besides, there's something just plain brutish about the prospect of having one's gut and ass sucked out by a glorified Hoover vacuum cleaner.
The Dark Wraith doesn't find anything at all comforting about hearing some plastic surgeon bawling out, "Let 'er rip, Nurse!"
Good evening, Misty.
I'm supposed to be concealed in shadows in that picture.
The Dark Wraith must have forgotten to set the Photoshop lighting effect on "Mask Ugly."
Good evening, Kathy. Thank you so much for stopping by. I've been wondering if you come to visit.
The Dark Wraith needs to update his blogroll one of these days very soon.
Good evening, Deb.
I do hope we'll hear about your truffle eating experience. It seems to me that a joy shared is a pleasure multiplied, at least when it comes to food.
Before the holidays are over, I'll be posting my recipe for white chocolate raspberry truffle cheesecake. I shall include pictures of the preparation of this delight. I always make one for the holidays to take to the school for folks to enjoy, although the last one I made as a special occasion thing for a faculty meeting got one person a bit unamused. It seems he was going in the next morning for one of those colonoscopy routines, and he was allowed to consume only clear liquids that evening.
I tried to explain to him that my cheesecake is unquestionably transparent in certain wavelengths. For example, at the wavelengths of gamma rays, my cheesecake would be as transparent as a glass window is in visible light. He declined to entertain my argument for why he should eat some of my cheesecake.
Medical procedures are starting to interfere with sound scientific reasoning these days if you ask me.
And as a side note, the Dark Wraith will have one of those colonoscopy things the day that Hell not only freezes over, but Satan does a skating twosome with the Lord Jesus Christ on the resulting ice.
Good evening, SB Gypsy.
I have to tell you that this is the first holiday I've come to realize that making truffles seems to be a tradition with some families and people. I never realized this, and now I'm wondering if it's a regional thing or possibly ethnic. I just don't know.
In my family, the big thing was making something called "divinity," along with certain types of cookies and overstuffed apple pies that make some mountain ranges look like prairie land by comparison.
Lord.
The Dark Wraith is getting hungry, and there just aren't any all-night, drive-through pie shops in this part of the country.
DW,
Eat too many of those and the birthdays may stop!
The description of your eating experience was interesting. It reminded me of the writing in those oh-so-literary works by Steele and Collins and others (Fabio?).
If you ever decide to forego finance and math and teaching, you show a remarkable talent for descriptive housewife novellas.
This is in no way a slam...but neither is it anything to 'truffle' with. There's good money waitin' to be spent by those lonely ladies!
Here's to many more healthy birthdays! Cheers!
Good morning, Father Tyme.
I have every intention of publishing a small bit of a steamy romance novel here at The Dark Wraith Forums. I've been threatening to do this for some time, now, and I suppose I should get on with it.
I just don't want people to think I'm some cheap, tawdry novelist who would pound out over-heated, smokey pulp just to make big money.
Not that I wouldn't pound out cheap, tawdry, over-heated, smokey pulp novels for big money; I just don't want people to think I would.
The Dark Wraith has his standards, y'know.
the Dark Wraith will have one of those colonoscopy things the day that Hell not only freezes over, but Satan does a skating twosome with the Lord Jesus Christ on the resulting ice.
Ha! Don't go to Southern California, dear DW. When I was visiting a friend there a few years ago, she was so excited about her new colonoscopist (I cannot bring myself to type colon therapist), she insisted on giving ME a session for my birthday (I declined, claiming extreme intestinal trauma caused by years of living in Central America).
Can you imagine? A gift certificate for having your lower intestine vacuumed out via a garden-hose-like thing that gets inserted...well, only in Southern California would it not only be imaginable, but actual.
Actually, what my present entailed was a colonic, not a colonoscopy, which is a medically necessary procedure all of us forty-somethings need to think about (and procrastinate). Sorry; I was a bit confused.
Good evening, litbrit.
I assign great significance to the colon: it serves both as the punctual terminus to the flow of an idea and as the preferred, if constrained, gateway to the adjoining thought that is a subordinate consequence.
When I was a teenager in the first years of what would turn out to be a lifetime of lower stomach problems that at times have literally disrupted and shaped my world, my family's doctor referred me to a small county hospital, where I was to be explored to find out what was wrong. I was mixed up with another patient, and the first night I was fed a whole bottle of large, hard pills that were supposed to dye my gall bladder, which was not in any way, shape, or form a problem. I was told to swallow them all at once, so I did; and about an hour-and-a-half later, I blew my groceries like a volcano. I would only later find out that the doctors and nurses believed that I had made myself barf up all of what had become a goodly quart of grotesque, yellow paste. Once they got around to determining that what I was supposed to have was a lower GI (gastro-intestinal exam), they gave me a bottle of Castor oil and told me to drink it all down at once. It was mint flavored. I did so. As a long-term side consequence of what was to come of that experience, to this very day I cannot stand the smell or taste of anything with even the remotest hint of mint, peppermint, spearmint, or you-name-it-mint. You see, when you suffer from chronic, debilitating, lower gastro-intestinal problems, things like Castor oil and the barium enema that followed are like throwing gasoline on a seething fire that's just looking for its next excuse to put you through a couple weeks of Hell. That didn't matter to them, though. They went through their degrading procedure and saw absolutely nothing unusual on the machine as they coursed the barium chloride clear into my small intestine.
They concluded with the diagnosis that had just come into vogue at the time: psychosomatic disorder. It was all in my head, and I was lying about the problem just so I could get attention.
The years have gone by rather quickly. There have been quite a few hours-long sessions; copious blood; grinding, mind-bending cramps; more than a few blackouts in the throes of difficult sessions; a residual excuse for a broader obsession with fanatical cleanliness; and finally, after years and years, a growing understanding that the more I control what and how much I eat, the less trouble I have: tomatoes, apples, onions, beans, and anything with lots of fiber are sure-fire guarantees of three or four hours of pain and then two or three hours of getting it over with.
We live and we learn.
Oh, yes: I learned not just to stay away from quite a few foods, but also away from doctors. As far as I'm concerned, they can take their pills, their dehumanizing, degrading rituals of dominance, their corporatized concern, their high-and-mighty technology, and they can shove the whole jagged lot of it right straight up their colons. And if they say it hurts, I'll tell them it's all in their heads...
...provided, that is, they can get all of their medical sublimeness to go that far.
The Dark Wraith has thus demonstrated what real irritable bowel syndrome produces as expressive literature.