Thursday, 1/4

Because I have to be at the station at 8am (gulp) to warp the minds of impart knowledge of how local media works to the latest class of the Lake Superior Community Partnership Leadership Academy, I'm gonna leave with a question someone asked four years ago around this time.

Oh, and the answer's in there, too.

Back tomorrow with something new. In the meantime, keep your fingers crossed that I stay awake during my presentation!

(jim@wmqt.com)

*****

(as originally posted January 10^th, 2014)

It’s not as much as you think it is. Trust me on that one.

I guess I write about chocolate in here on occasion, right? I mean, sure, when I say “occasion” I actually mean “writing about it so much that it borderlines on pathological obsession”, but I do write about chocolate in here, and I mention it quite often on the air, as well. So when someone asked me yesterday just how much chocolate I eat in a week and I gave them my answer, they actually refused to believe me.

Trust me, though--I wasn’t lying.

I know some people seem to think that I eat nothing but chocolate, including the person who asked me the question, but it’s not true. If you look at my chocolate consumption on a weekly basis, you’d probably be stunned. This doesn’t happen every week--some weeks I eat more, many more weeks I eat less--but on average, I’ll enjoy a three ounce (100 gram) bar from Europe on the weekend, and then parcel out another 3-ounce bar of dark chocolate the rest of the week, eating one (or two) pieces a day at work. So on average, I eat two chocolate bars a week.

Not the two or three bars a day the person who asked the question assumed!

Actually, I don’t know if anyone could eat that much chocolate in a day; not only would your health probably suffer quite a bit, but if you ate that much chocolate it seems like you’d get sick of it fairly quickly. At least I know I’D get sick of it fairly quickly if I ate that much on a daily basis. Nope; I’m quite happy with the amount that I eat each week. And I’m even happier with the quality of that amount!

Take this week, for example. On Saturday and Sunday I consumed a German dark chocolate bar that was a Christmas gift from my in-laws, who seem to know me only all too well. It was heavenly; in fact, I have another one waiting for me that I bought when we were in Europe together last summer. Then during the week I’ll be nibbling on a Ghirardelli Intense Dark bar, made of 72% dark chocolate goodness (the perfect percentage for all those good antioxidants dark chocolate provides). I’ll finish that Friday, and that’ll be my chocolate consumption for this seven day period.

Surprised? I hope I haven’t misled you guys all these years. I mean, sure, I write about chocolate a lot because I have a bit of a passion for it. But maybe--just maybe--I may have, well, misinterpreted the depth of my passion for it. I don’t consume mass quantities. For one thing, if I ate as much chocolate as I sometimes infer, I’d probably weigh twice what I weigh now. And like I said, if I ate as much chocolate as I infer, I’d be sick of it by now. I mean, I love chocolate as much as the next person, but I also like fruits and vegetables and whole grains and everything else that’s included in a balanced diet.

I’m almost being blasphemous when I say this, but there IS more to life than chocolate, despite what & how I may write in here on occasion. So now you know the truth--two bars a week, max. Just try not to hold it against me the next time I go off on a great new bar I’ve tried, okay?

8-)