Chocolate

Did you know you can eat chocolate straight from the freezer?

I didn’t, until last year, approximately three days after Easter.

I’d frozen the leftover chocolate bunnies and eggs to get them out of my sight then, on a rare craving, and because I don’t have junk food in the house, resorted to raiding the downstairs freezer. It certainly was edible - just slightly colder and crunchier.

So that plan didn’t work.

This year, under no such illusions, I simply hid half the kids’ haul around the house. Such was the volume, that its absence went unnoticed. Therefore, I was mostly hiding it from myself.

There’s no way anyone could eat that much chocolate without it having detrimental effects on their health. As it was, Master Seven lost another tooth over Easter. Luckily the tooth fairy found him on holiday but it was a close call. We’d gone away for a couple of nights and I’d taken the other half of the chocolate with us with the intent of palming most of it off to visitors. Trouble was, they had the same plan so we just ended up playing swapsies.

When the tooth came out and he’d finished making a big song and dance night fell but do you think three excited kids, hyped up from too much chocolate and sleeping in the same room were going to sleep?

Exhausted from all the organising, packing and travel I sat up in bed, gripping $1 in reminder and constantly drifting off, only to abruptly be jolted awake from their peels of laughter.

Finally all was quiet and I performed my duty but was woken before 6am by an excited Master Seven waving $1 in my face.

Then came the demands for their chocolate. “Mum, is it morning tea time yet?” they asked at 8am.

To distract them I got them to take some fish over to the elderly neighbours. But this backfired. Our kindly neighbour promptly returned the favour by producing three M&M-filled eggs from her spare room.

The kids came hurtling home, beaming from ear to ear and with the M&Ms rattling like crazy within their hollow eggs. Who was I to rain on their parade? They gutsed them down but, with the fish practically leaping into the boat all weekend, we had plenty to go round. 

It turns out the neighbour had plenty more M&M-filled Easter eggs stored in her spare room too.

I heard the familiar rattling from the other side of the fence and, this time, intercepted them.

We returned home with more chocolate than we left with and, before I had a chance to hide this latest stash, my willpower left me.

Did you know chocolate expires?

Clearly the neighbour has more self-discipline than me and had been holding onto these in her spare room for a long time. Perhaps I should suggest the freezer option?

Personally, I would forgo the freezer. If I’m going to play my own game of hide and seek next time a random binge strikes I’d rather have the prize at room temperature.