When Things get Tough the Tough eat Chocolate

§ Confessions of a chocolate-chomping teacher 

I never believed chocolate gives you pimples. 2015 is my year to prove it

Last September they sent me to teach in a mountain village: 54 km from home.

Since then, I've been commuting 4 times a week, sometimes 5.

The alarm clock at 5 am, insomnia, mountain roads with bends and curves, loud students, fatigue, temperature, hundreds of bucks on gasoline, fools overtaking you in tunnels or on a snowy bend, trucks slagging uphill at 30 km/h + rain, fog, cold, snow...

No.

No way.

No way I could have made it without chocolate and be here to tell the tale.

110 km driving per day
=
440 km driving per week
=
1,760 km driving per month
=15,840 kilometers by car in a school year

my consumption of chocolate skyrocketed
35 grams a day

=
210 grams per 6 days a week
=
840 grams per month
=7,560 kg CHOCOLATE in a school year (of 9 months)


I ate it all guilt-free, with no extra fat or pimples

in front of the coffee vending machine some days ago a colleague told me of her new ice-cream maker; I was already revving when she added “I have to find some ice-cream recipes without cream and sugar, and I was thinking of coffee ice-cream”.
what?
I just let it slide: I don't even remember my name before morning coffee, but I don't waste a look on coffee ice-cream.
Ditto for chocolate: I can't conceive the creation of the universe without chocolate, but chocolate cake and ice-cream give me no thrills.

I didn't like to discourage her, so I just ignored the remark. But now that I 'm thinking and writing about it I wonder: why the hell did she get a new flashy ice-cream maker, if she doesn't want to make good, creamy, yummy ice-cream?

a minute before the bell prompted us back to the classroom I took out a couple of "lifesaving chocolates"; Gobbling hers with a grimace the colleague told me she is a purist, and she would eat dark chocolate only - with minimum 70% cocoa, to be sure.

“You should give it back then!” I thought to myself, but, nope, of course, too late, the chocolate was gone... And so were we, time's up and we had to slave away.


I'm positive an abyss separates us: I want my chocolate with hazelnuts - beautiful round and crispy. And all guilt-free.

kitkatcadburylindtnutellatoblerone .... Sounds like a mantra, doesn't it? Has anybody invented chocolate yoga anywhere close?

Luckily I'm not fat & alone - my husband, Tiziano, is a skinny gourmand and an accomplice in tasty raids, although he, too, prefers dark chocolate.

Now it's June: it's warm and we eat less; of course that means less chocolate, too; anyhow, in recent months I noticed that if I eat my daily share at breakfast and o n e little chocolate or praline at the morning coffee break, then I'm fine and I don't crave any more during the day.

Now it's June, and it'll be hot, soon: summer closets reopening means struggling with buttons and zippers, ..any distressing thought of the bikini test at the back of your mind yet?

...It's June, it's warm, September a distant memory, my nervous system's OK, and suddenly I wonder: how many megaton calories have I been gulping down with the hundreds ounces of chocolate I've been eating??

Sooner done than said: 100 grams of milk chocolate with hazelnuts contain 573

calories, informs me the first package at hand in my living-room. So here we go:

573 calories / 100 grams
=
5,730 calories per kilo
=
43,318.8 calories in a school year

=1,203.3 per week

=4,813.20 per month!

As you can see from these 2 pictures of mine, I got tired 

- from September to December -

and my face is plumper in the second picture -

but I had no pimples, and that was the hardest time at school:

the peak of dark days after sleepless nights after early mornings.

If I'm not mistaken, just by halving the chocolate and increasing the walks, my hips should get trimmer soon!
Luckily Tiziano and I are also sports people, we love long walks, swimming, snowshoeing, biking, so now in June's long days we can enjoy hikes in the fresh air on the hills near home before or after dinner, accompanied by singing blackbirds and immersed in the scent of flowers.

Tiziano and I are so hand in glove in our sweet and tasty love that we even made our wedding favours with little Nutella jars - “nutellini”, we call them.

Fancy the treat?

I'm positive I'm not the only shameless chocolate chomper on “the only planet with chocolate”, so how about you?

Have you ever calculated how many pounds of chocolate - or pizza, or any other “comfort food” you eat in a month - or a year – to sooth your soul?

Come on, don't be shy! Get your sarongs AND your skeletons out of the closet!

Annalisa

When Things get Tough the Tough eat Chocolate

§ Confessions of a chocolate-chomping teacher 

I never believed chocolate gives you pimples. 2015 is my year to prove it

Last September they sent me to teach in a mountain village: 54 km from home.

Since then, I've been commuting 4 times a week, sometimes 5.

The alarm clock at 5 am, insomnia, mountain roads with bends and curves, loud students, fatigue, temperature, hundreds of bucks on gasoline, fools overtaking you in tunnels or on a snowy bend, trucks slagging uphill at 30 km/h + rain, fog, cold, snow...

No.

No way.

No way I could have made it without chocolate and be here to tell the tale.

110 km driving per day
=
440 km driving per week
=
1,760 km driving per month
=15,840 kilometers by car in a school year 

 

Read the whole post here 

 

 

 

§ False steps

Drops of ripe currant stained my white boots, yesterday in the garden.
It's a July afternoon. The speaker in the classroom is telling us how to write a good story, but I look in front of me – at feet and body parts.
I've been studying them for months, in weekly meetings with suspended words, chats on books and songs, jokes about the news, anger, memories, and other wonders.
I always write down everything on my notebook. Sometimes I also draw: a profile or the traits of a mouth. A fixed expression and a surprised one.

But today I look at the shoes.

Apart from the drops of ripe currant, my boots are white. Summer Indian boots with a round of studs. Once polished, they're beautiful again. The other shoes in the circle of chairs before me on large, long feet are sandals and sneakers.

I stare at the thighs in front of me: long muscles wrapped in a pigeon-coloured denim; at the end of big, hairy, honey-blond, almost thick ankles, there are matching shoes. Suede loafers, expensive and light on the feet. Clean. Almost new: the crêpe rubber is little worn, the upper looks uncut and moss-coloured stitching perfectly mark the edge.
Fashionable dainty loafers of beige light leather, untreated, for great comfort and healthy feet.

They're not as dirty as my boots. They have no stains of grass, or fruit, or mud.

Indeed, they're always very clean; but I seem to notice only on a summer day of rain. They will never get dirty, you see.

They can not get filthy, torn or worn. No gravel or sun, no sand or grass. No dirt or debris from the newly paved roads of summer construction sites at every crossroad. They don't walk or stop at the lights.

No puddles to avoid for these smooth shoes of untreated leather.
Sure, walk they do: many steps are taken in the delicate shades of moss with the untouched upper and the clean seams: dry and dusty hallways is what they cross.
Every day, they pass gates, run through corridors, and return, the suede loafers, so dainty, so soft and so neat; they cross a room and reach a window, they slow down at a sink, stop in front of a bed.

Get in the shower in the morning, to the library now and again.

Stand in the chapel and attend Mass on Sunday; once a week, they go see Mum.

And when I leave, on Fridays, the neat, soft and so dainty lightweight loafers walk back into a cell.

For these lightweight loafers that are so soft and dainty and neat, they dress the feet of a killer, you see.

 

From: 2 or 3 Things I know about Killers 

§ The Shoes