one martini, two martini, three martini...floor.

I went on my uncle's boat yesterday and we rode over to the Island. An afternoon of caramel apple martinis and conversation. It was really lovely, but I must confess the afternoon went a little like this: one martini, two martini, three martini, floor.

I put up a brave fight, dear readers, but I've become a terrible lightweight. My days of drinking double rye and waters of epic numbers are gone. It's the heat and the smog, I'm telling you! Honest to goodness truth! Somehow I don't think my declarations were all that convincing.

We passed a school of sailboats and I mentioned how I would like to do that sometime. "Sign up next summer," my uncle said, "and find a nice man whose parents belong to the club." Well, that sounds easy enough.

The conversation reminds me of Stevie Nicks' "Landslide" because it recalls the questions we ask ourselves (I ask myself?) about whether we'll fulfill all of our wild dreams, whether we'll find the courage within ourselves to move forward, whether we'll make it. "Can I sail through the changing ocean tides? Can I handle the seasons of my life?" she asks, but we never know, of course. Judging strictly by the conversations I've shared with others while under the influence (!), though, I can't help but feel as though so many of life's answers can be found at the bottom of a martini glass, caramel apple or no, and that by discussing our fears with others we can somehow expunge them from our thoughts. Or something like that.

(I'll quit with the martini jokes, I promise.)

As Elizabeth Gilbert announces so candidly in Committed, "I went to Cambodia because I had to go. It may have been a messy and botched experience, but that doesn't mean I shouldn't have gone. Sometimes life is messy and botched. We do our best. We don't always know the right move." We just flat out don't know. Can I manoeuvre a sailboat? Can I succeed in this city? Can I learn how to bake a soufflé without burning it?

I think Baroque painter Caravaggio had the right idea. Even in the darkness, all of the objects that appear in his works are strikingly clear and visible. Perhaps if we're willing to open our eyes, the darkness has the ability to shine a little light -- however dim the light may be. And maybe if we're too preoccupied with the search for a bright, obvious light, we'll miss our chance to move out of the rabbit hole. Sometimes our wants come to look so different than we ever expected them to.

Thank goodness for that.

Caramel Apple Martini

2 parts butterscotch schnapps
2 parts sour apple liqueur
1 part vodka

Add ingredients to a cocktail shaker filled with ice. Shake vigorously and strain into a cocktail glass. Pace yourself: it may taste like candy, but this drink is as potent as they come.

"But, oh my dear [chocolate], our love is here to stay, together we're going a long, long way..."

Readers, I intended to write an entry extolling the virtues of dark chocolate, really I did.

I was going to mention how I contemplated pairing my morning cup of coffee with a square of dark chocolate (which I suppose I've just gone ahead and mentioned regardless), and how being an adult is sometimes marvelous, particularly when you live by your lonesome, as it means few obstacles stand in the way of your eating chocolate before breakfast.

I was doing well in terms of fanciful thinking: there was my short-lived romance with Ruth Reichl and my living vicariously through her via Garlic and Sapphires. I danced for a while with a Mark Bittman title. In the last few days alone, I yearned to be a restaurant critic for The New York Times, a cultural anthropologist, Amanda Hesser, and a journalist.

I'm still fairly determined to take cooking classes eventually, or, on the rare occasion I indulge my fantasies, attend culinary school by taking night and weekend classes and eventually go on exchange in Italy. You might think such fancies would interfere with my thoughts on chocolate, but readers, they did not. And then I made the mistake of getting into this, and, well, all bets were off. In my hands was a book about a very serious matter, and poof, out went all thoughts of a fluffy love poem devoted to deliciousness. Consider yourselves saved -- imagine an entire entry devoted to lines like, I go loco over cocoa. I can't.

I digress. I intended to write about chocolate, you see, but reading a somewhat historical account of marriage as institution over the last couple of days got me thinking again about the restorative properties of food, and how food and eating might serve as a sort of litmus test for our relationships, romantic and otherwise.

I admit fully that I really know nothing about food and cooking, that there is really so much to know, but I think that's okay. As Ruth Reichl points out in Garlic and Sapphires, ethnic food -- apart from your typical Americanized, greasy Chinese food -- didn't really gain any notoriety until the late 90's, so I don't feel so guilty that, apart from the odd Ethiopian stew or Indian lentil dish, I don't dabble so much in ethnic cuisine. It's okay that, relatively speaking, I've yet to dabble in much of anything. I like food, and I like eating. I like people, and I like their stories. I like it best when I'm let in on a cherished family recipe. That's really the essence of this site.

I don't have any of those to offer myself, I'm sorry to say, but here, sipping on hot tea and contemplating in great wonderment what it means to be human, I can't help but think what my own family has passed on to me: the belief that cooking is a very beautiful passion indeed; that making a meal for someone else constitutes an enormous act of love; and that through good, whole food, we can restore our health.

Yes, this entry has little to do with chocolate, but it does have something to do with adulthood, and with taking -- ohh, that wretched phrase that tempts adults to crawl back into the shell of childhood! -- taking responsibility. In Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert discusses how a couple who entered into a pragmatic marriage came to love one another, slowly and surely, over the years, and how in the end, when his wife no longer knew herself as her mind continued to deteriorate from Alzheimer's, the husband dressed her nicely and took her to church every Sunday because he knew she would've liked it and appreciated it had she been cognisant. He fed her, he bathed her, and he took care of her.

I remembered a moment when I worked at a restaurant a couple years ago. A husband was helping his wife to eat because she was disabled and could not do it herself. That's love, really -- the underbelly of infatuation, the act that can't be proven with promises but must instead be demonstrated over the years, chosen repeatedly over time. What a scary, amazing thought. Whether it's re-heating a pot of spicy chili over a hot burner on a cool January night, baking up an enchilada casserole for my family, or preparing roast sweet potatoes in a brown butter vinaigrette, that's my way of saying, I choose to love you again today.

In the name of love and assistance, I'm giving you my recipe for homemade Larabars. There's dozens of these floating around the Internet, but this is the one I've been using. When I first got sick and became someone with inconvenient dietary restrictions, I started buying Larabars. They're portable, they're healthy, they're delicious, they're filling -- I could go on all day about the amazing thing that is a Larabar. Fortunately, the recipe is easy and the bars keep for a good long while so long as they're refrigerated. It's the single person's way of saying to themselves, okay, I guess I'll love you again today, even if you leave the bowl of the food processor in the sink all night because you're super lazy and awfully forgetful.


PS. They contain chocolate.

Chocolate Ginger Date (Lara)bars

Adapted from Clothilde Dusoulier at Chocolate and Zucchini, and Samantha Menzies at Bikini Birthday

Yields about 9 bite-sized bars

Heaping 1/2 cup of pitted dates, roughly chopped (about 200g)
1/4 cup walnuts
10g dark chocolate (I used 2 squares of Lindt's 85% cocoa)
2 tbsp crystallized ginger
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
Scant 1/4 tsp sea salt

Combine all of the ingredients in a food processor and pulse until the ingredients are all very finely chopped and clump together. At this point, you can roll the mixture into balls, bars, or do as I did -- flatten the mixture using a spatula, and slice into bites.

*The title of this entry comes from "Love is Here to Stay", lyrics and music written by Ira Gershwin and George Gershwin, respectively.