Absences

When I started this I wanted to write every weekday, and I've mostly kept to that schedule. Some of you may have noticed, though, that there have been a couple of missed days recently. Those are my chocolate days.

On a chocolate day, I get up around 7:00am and by 8:30am I am already covered in chocolate - and you can take it from devoted partner this is not a sexy-covered-in-chocolate thing at all. I work pretty much straight through, filling the time during which the chocolate has to reach temper by making ganache or caramel or a batch of pates de fruit. I do not stop and check email or even, generally, eat or use the bathroom. It just seems to be the way I work. At night - generally between 7:00pm and 9:00pm, I finish, search for a starch and a seat, and sometimes take a washcloth to my chocolate parts. This is a day in the life of my little chocolate niche.

I've been busy this December for the first time in a long while, and that has been nice. But, having been away from the process, I'm looking at it with new eyes, and these eyes do not like what they see. The meticulous way that I make my confections makes them take a really long time. Over the years, I have tried to be ever so slightly less exacting, but the fact is, every piece has my hands on it at some point in its lifecycle. As I think about the future, I realize this might be unsustainable. I can't imagine that the successful chocolate makers I see are physically interacting with each piece produced under their auspices.

This passes the time while I decorate, or stir, or clean.

This week should be the last production week - I have some outstanding orders and some personal ones, oh, and a whole bunch of people are coming to my house on Saturday and I expect they'll want to eat something. So I didn't write on Friday and I apologize - I hope this was a decent excuse.