Chocolate: My Viagra in a Tempting Foil Wrapper

I knew I shouldn’t have gone shopping so close to dinner. But it was the fabric store; how much temptation can there be? It turns out, the wicked marketers of the universe (of which, unfortunately, I am one), have discovered that anywhere a woman is likely to wait in line is ground zero for a candy display. And where there’s candy, there’s chocolate. Normally I can whisk by a candy display stacked with peanut butter cups, Kit Kat bars and Almond Joys without so much as a second glance. To my grown-up tastebuds, these glossy-packaged containers of high fructose corn syrup that are merely flavored with cocoa are imposters. Pseudo-chocolates. The candy equivalent of trashy paperback fiction. I’ve learned the difference between unhealthy sweets and those with some genuine benefits.  Okay, let’s put it right out there—I’ve become a chocolate snob.

But this is what I noticed while waiting behind a mom with four sugar-craving kids who kept trying to coerce her into buying them Snickers bars: The candy peddlers have gotten wise to us. Now they’re stocking those roll-up hypoglycemic dispensers with the good stuff. Little Raffaelo onsies. Slices of Godiva. Bite-size Dove. I zeroed in on a row of foil-wrapped Ghiradelli singles. The thought of 60% cacao melting on my tongue began to work on my pleasure receptors. Endorphins started to flow. The little foil packet was calling to me. Eat me. You know you want to.

I caved. I handed the cashier my pile of cut fabric, a pack of fusible hem tape, and the little envelope of contraband. She asked me if I wanted it in my bag and I said, as I ripped into the foil, “No, it’s for now.”