Recycling chocolate

Several interest groups extol the virtues of recycling.  It is supposed to be a good thing concerning the environment.  To re-employ in man’s service the fruit from the earth which was so callously plundered. Not just fruit of course.  Metals, minerals and indeed, fruits.  In the food environment we used to call it leftovers.  The flavour of your school sandwiches echoed the refrain of last night’s dinner ⁽¹⁾ “Waste not, want not” used to be the dictum.  These days the truth lies closer to “Wasted, not want.”  I might be maligning the youth here, but am willing to take the chance.  They can’t respond in full sentences anyhow. 

I endorse the concept of recycling in most cases.  Movies, television programs, music and history are some of the instances where I think recycling is overrated.   And chocolates.  I like chocolate.  It has the distinction of being my only vice that I can control to a reasonable degree.  A slab of high cocoa chocolate can lay unmolested in my cupboard for weeks.  Not many foodstuffs can claim that.

The recycling of “A food made from roasted ground cacao beans, usually sweetened and eaten as dark brown solid confectionery” ⁽²⁾ has been going on for years.  From the mists of time that now constitutes my early youth, there is an image of an advent’s calendar that had little chocolates behind each of the numbered windows leading up to 24th December.  I do not recall the confectioneries themselves as they were long eaten by the time I can recall.  But there was no way my mother was not going to reuse a perfectly sound advents calendar just because the chocolates were finished.  So while the other calendars had pictures or verses this one had indentations in plastic

My mother could not have been alone in this practice and therefore it is fair to suppose that the next year there would be unsold calendars with chocolate in them that had to be stored for their once a year chance.  They (no, I don’t know who THEY are.  I value my life and will not even attempt to find out) then invented several second tier holidays to enable recycling.  The Easter bunny and his unlikely chocolate eggs are several months away and those children are not going to stop climbing the trees to pick the cacao beans.  And so Valentine’s Day was invented.  Those too Christmassy chockies die in a swirl of heat to be reborn as overpriced heart shaped delights.  The sale of these is depended on the current economic conditions.  If things are looking up, then jewellery will sabotage the sales.  If things are desperate then flowers will win (they can be procured from gardens and parks).  In between it is chocolate’s market.

The reincarnation of hearts into Easter eggs are not widely published, for who wants to read “The Easter Bunny, unlucky in love, melted down Valentines hearts to bring this egg shaped air container lined with chocolate to you.”  And the cycle continues into Mother’s Day.  Only those eggs hidden too well to be discovered by roaming children survive to live on.  Then a break of several months before the Christmas advertising starts in late September.  Maybe the tree-climbing serfs do get a break. 

This year you are to boycott all things chocolaty until Laurent Gbagbo of the Ivory Coast does a Mubarak.  Most of that country’s income is from cocoa beans, so by eating chocolate you are supporting an illegitimate regime.  I will not be buying chocolates this Valentine’s Day, nothing to do with West Africa.  But because, just like mother’s day, there is no point.

(1)    Several pompous sentences.  I thought I lost the touch.
(2)    Strange how a dictionary can make something seem unappetising.  Go look up debauchery.