This week I'm lucky enough to have this great guest post from Luba Lesychyn author of the new book Theft by Chocolate. A big thanks to Ms. Lesychyn for sharing her thoughts about this great new book with us :) Don't forget to enter the Theft by Chocolate Giveaway for your chance to win $150 in Chocolate!!
Just
What Is It About Chocolate?
by Luba Lesychyn
Besides being the author of Theft By Chocolate, a sassy museum
mystery about a woman of a certain age looking for chocolate, love, and an
international art thief in all the wrong places, I work at a city college in
Toronto that is home to one of Canada’s most renowned cooking schools. And I
live in a city that has the most restaurants per capita than any other city in
the world! So I have done a lot of enjoying, consuming, and contemplating of
food over the years. And much of that food meditation has focused on what it is
that I love so much about chocolate.
Chocolate is not the only food I love
(though it is the only one with which I am truly obsessed). I love eating –
plain and simple. And for twenty-five years, I have been a dedicated gym rat,
and added dance and running to my activities over time, to accommodate my love
of food. In other words, I have always worked out to eat.
I
became vegetarian three years ago and although I cut out meat, fish, and
poultry, my love for food has not diminished. I miss some elements about these
foods, but it has less to do with flavor and a heck of a lot more to do with
another food characteristic. Allow me to explain…
When I first became vegetarian and was
shopping for alternative foods at my favourite organic grocery store, the deli
counter carried mock chicken and mock shrimp (tofu-based). I found these foods
rather odd. Wasn’t the concept akin to people wearing faux fur instead of real
fur (which to me is like saying “we’re going to pretend we’re wearing fur, but
it’s not real fur, really”). So with the faux animal proteins, it’s like saying
“we’re going to pretend we’re eating meat, but it’s not really meat, really.”
Huh?
But as my days as a vegetarian continued,
it all started to make sense to me. I began to miss the texture of meat, the
way it broke down when you chewed it, the way it felt making its way down to my
digestive system, and even the way it rested in my stomach.
So now I get the reasoning behind mock
meats. It seems humans can more easily get over living without certain flavors
than they can of being deprived of certain food textures. And this notion, I
realized, applied as much to chocolate as it did to animal proteins.
I first noticed how much I loved the
texture of chocolate after I started doing detoxes or cleanses, as they are
also known. For a period of anywhere between a few days to a month, one
eliminates products like meats, sugars, grains, and dairy from their body to
help “cleanse” the digestive system and to rid it of toxins. People always ask
me how I am able to be so disciplined about it considering how much I love my
sweets, but once I commit to the process, I stick with it until it is
concluded. Surprisingly, I have found that I can live relatively easily without
these foods. But what I always find most challenging about doing a cleanse is
not having a food that crunches like chocolate and then melts into a liquid
treat as it glides down the throat.
I do eat a lot of nuts during a detox
(note: a lot of cleanses advocate eliminating nuts, but I would starve without
them), and they do satisfy the crunch factor I would normally get from
chocolate. But there is nothing, nothing, and nothing that crunches and then
melts like chocolate. I know carob has been touted by many as a substitute for
chocolate. No offense to carob growers, but it ain’t chocolate.
I’ve tried just about everything from
meditation and hypnotherapy to Bach flower remedies and past life regression to
eliminate my chocolate cravings – and been unsuccessful. The longest chocolate
droughts I’ve had have been about three to four months, following hypnotherapy.
I have tried to make peace with the fact that chocolate and I will likely be
“one” for the rest of my life. But I will have to continually work on
monitoring the quantity of chocolate I consume.
And some of those struggles are mirrored
in the capricious adventures of chocolate addict Kalena Boyko in Theft By Chocolate.
Connect with Luba Lesychyn
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