Invest in chocolate!
The Witch Doctor remembers the early days of The Chocolate Tasting Club.
She was a member.
Of course.
This company has expanded greatly since then and now is known as Hotel Chocolate. Well, it may be know as that in the USA but here it has a french penchant – “Hotel Chocolat”
Apparently you can now invest in Hotel Chocolat by investing in bonds with a 5.83% tax free return.
But the interest is not in £’s or $’s. It melts in your mouth.
You’ve guessed.
The interest is paid annually in chocolate – 13 boxes a year!
Chocolate is poison to dogs
A few years ago, a GP sent an e-mail to everyone in his address book.
His dog had died after eating a whole box of chocolates that had been left lying about.
He had no knowledge that chocolate could be so dangerous to animals and he wanted to warn the rest of us.
This is just a warning!
I’ll get round to tell you more about why chocolate is poisonous to dogs later.
If I can be bothered.
Chocolate is the new cheese
WHY POSH CHOCOLATE IS RECESSION PROOF
Now I feast on such piquant luxuries as fresh English mint ganache by Allsop available at my local market in Marlow, and bars of 70 per cent chocolate by Amadei. I scour food magazines such as Olive for the latest flavours (rose, for example, or Japanese black vinegar). I plan trips to London along my chocolate route, taking in Rococo in Marylebone, L’Artisan du Chocolat in Chelsea, and La Maison du Chocolat in Piccadilly.
What surprises me is that I am obviously not alone in my addiction. Despite the prices they charge, these shops are heaving. The luxury chocolate market seems not to have been affected by the recession at all. In fact, quite the reverse: this Easter, you can get an Amadei egg from William Curley filled with carmelised Piedmont hazelnuts, almonds or orangettes for £25. Selfridges has an egg containing a Gold Bullion Britannia coin for £1,000, billing it as “the ultimate alternative investment for chocoholics”.
Le Bain Marie
Well, My Black Cat, we need to make some more of our favourite chocolate recipe.
I see you’ve looked out Le Bain-Marie.
Go and check that The White Storage Jar is filled before we start.
And go shopping for oranges.
Then we’ll begin.
Grape Hyacinths
I downloaded this photo of a grape hyacinth (Muscari) recently to use at the top of The Witch Doctor site. I love the simplicity of these little spring flowers. At the moment, for reasons I won’t go into, I have a really neglected garden, but in the days of its former glory there were edgings of hundreds (no, thousands) of little grape hyacinths along the paths every spring. They were a deeper blue than the ones in the picture. My grape hyacinths have long since gone. At some point, I know not when, alpine strawberries got the upper hand and now dominate.
I suppose the Muscari edging the garden paths look more like the ones below.
I think I’ll start over again and buy a selection of bulbs in grape hyacinths in lots of shades of blue. They are probably better planted now “in the green” the same as snowdrops.
Found a supplier that still has some bulbs left this year.
I’ll order some to get started and his time I’ll tend them well.
Here’s another nursery that specialises in small bulbs:
This is how I like to see flowers arranged in the house.
Looking as if they are just thrown into a glass or a jug (although they are really subtly arranged so’s no one will notice).
Crunchy strawberries
This is a very young blog, My Black Cat.
But already people are finding us using search engines.
They are asking “Are nectarines brown in the middle?”
There are some people out there who are not sure what the inside of a nectarine should look like.
The Witch Doctor has another bee in her bonnet.
Crunchy Strawberries!
Sometimes people tell her they don’t like strawberrries.
Could it be they have only every tasted large crunchy strawberries?
Do you suppose they think strawberries are a member of the turnip family, My Black Cat?
Street photos from a cyclist
Wonder how many odd gloves are lying around the mile radius from where you are now.
I love these photographs.
“GLOVES” FROM THE CYCLE COMMUTER
Don’t ask me why.
I just do.
He’s found the odd gloves.
Now, where are the odd socks?
Why are so many UK databases illegal?
Just a passing thought, My Black Cat.
We have posted on our other blog about a study just published which looks at 46 UK databases and finds that only 6 of them are legal under EU law. They have been given GREEN status. All the others are AMBER or RED.
Fortunately they are not collecting a Database of Chocolate Eaters, although the Fat Children Database might well come into that category.
THINK ABOUT IT, MY BLACK CAT, HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF THEY PUT YOU ON THE FAT CAT DATABASE?
Now, why on Earth would the UK government so blatantly design their databases so they break EU law?
And it takes people who seem to have something to do with Fruit Gums to tell them?
Do you suppose there might be an obvious reason we are missing, My Black Cat?
Bizarre.
Very bizarre!
Grumbling doctors and magic witches
There is a doctor call Dr Grumble who has a blog in the UK. He used to grumble most days, but now he mainly grumbles at weekends, although today is a Monday and he’s grumbling to himself between patients at his outpatient clinic.
Mostly during the weekdays he reads rather than grumbles.
Often his grumbles are really words of wisdom.
Much of the material he reads is very interesting and he directs us to it at the side of his blog.
Today The Witch Doctor has picked up on an article which shows what happens when those other than witches dabble in magic.
It is an essay rather than an article so it takes a little while to read. Best read it when you are sitting comfortable by the fireside with a nice cup of hot chocolate before you go to bed tonight.
Here are some extracts to whet your chocolate appetite.
“From time to time in human history there occur events of a truly seismic significance, events that mark a turning point between one epoch and the next, when one orthodoxy is overthrown and another takes its place. The significance of these events is rarely apparent as they unfold: it becomes clear only in retrospect, when observed from the commanding heights of history. By such time it is often too late to act to shape the course of such events and their effects on the day-to-day working lives of men and women and the families they support.
There is a sense that we are now living through just such a time: barely a decade into the new millennium, barely 20 years since the end of the Cold War and barely 30 years since the triumph of neo-liberalism – that particular brand of free-market fundamentalism, extreme capitalism and excessive greed which became the economic orthodoxy of our time.”
Here’s the bit where politicians think they know something about magic.
“Ideally, the role of governments is simply to enforce contracts and protect the allocation of property rights. All other economic functions should be left to what Reagan called “the magic of the market”.
The Market is not covered in The Book of Spells.
Do The Stupid Humankind not realise that, My Black Cat?
A corner of The Spell Pantry
This is the corner of The Spell Pantry where all the chocolate spells are cast.
It always looks a bit of a clutter but we witches need to have everything handy when we are working.
And anyway, we thrive on clutter.
Never yet have I come across a witch who would be able to cope with a minimalistic life.
Anyway, today I was filling the white storage jar with an ingredient that is used a lot in The Book of Spells.
Maybe, I’ll cast a chocolate spell later in the week.
Ramblings on Fruit and Chocolate 