Saturday 6 January 2007

Treachery by chocolate



It's been one of those weeks. One hospitalised parent, two unplanned haircuts, a whole new year to wrestle to the ground. I reckoned a batch of therapeutic chocolate vegan East German traffic-light-man biscuits wouldn't go astray.

The recipe is my own, inspired by the chocolate vegan cookies I met back in my North Carolina days. Those guys were sumpin' else: 75c, as big as a saucer, crumbly round the edges, moist in the middle, just the thing to wash down a hard day speaking Americanese to hat-tippin', grits-n-gravy eatin', polite-as-pie southerners (wha, thank you, ma'am). And, of course, being vegan and all, they spoke profoundly to my inner half-baked lefty. "Eat us", they cooed, "And it will be just like you've personally smashed the patriarchy, abolished the death penalty, saved a rainforest and provided free health care for a family of impoverished Somalians."

My biscuits will never be the same as North Carolina's. I figure a state that boasts deep fried cola has a secret ingredient up its sleeve of which I will remain forever ignorant. But they're pretty darn good. Nay, even medicinal. And today's effort was going swimmingingly, until my inner half-baked lefty reached for a barely cooled East German traffic-light-man and that self-important cracker went and BURNT MY FINGER. The culprit, a still bubbling choc bit, hotter than the rest of the biscuit.

Yes, chocolate. Yes, my first love.

It's time for a divorce.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

My God! Deep-fried beverages? What will our American Cousins think of next? I know they tend (as a man) to value Good Ole-Fashioned Know-How, leavened with a dash of Yankee Ingenuity, but surely this is taking matters Too Far Indeed!

As for your Bosch traffic-signal-men, surely a goodly measure of chocolate would barely be enough to leaven the horrors of life under the Reds. Where did you find the cutter for them? - at "Fritzi's Memorabilia Emporium", perhaps? or "Wolfram's House o' Soviet-era Souvenirs"? Did one of those nice out of work actors at Checkpoint Charlie fix you up with a back-alley deal in contraband Soviet ironmongery? Or do they come from the "Left-Lenin Cookery Warehouse"?

I'm sure Chancellorin Merkel would appreciate a box - tied in red ribbon, of course!

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

There ain't nothin' a red-blooded Americain cain't fry, pardner. Just ask the North Vietnamese.

As for my communist traffic-signal chaps, they were posted to me on consignment by my comradess in Germanville. She tells me the Ampelmann has gone free market, and is now colonising the world via cookie cutters and ice-cube-makers.

Anonymous said...

Ach du liebe! Don't tell me that that last bastion of all that was great about the Former East (not counting the Trabant automobile, rationing, and wooden shoes) has sold out and has now been relegated to that most dusty of historic backwaters - Kitsch City?!

Alexis, Baron von Harlot said...

Yea verily. And here, while we're mourning Great Sellings-Out on Behalf of Communist Icons, let's spare a thought for the sweatshop labourers tacking together Che Guevara t-shirts as we speak.

Anonymous said...

Quite.