“I know I’m not alone…” sings Michael Franti, but I am certain he isn’t talking about these werewolf-like nights of this, the Harvest Moon in October. Normally the harvest moon comes in September bringing with it the early bright light traditionally allowing farmers to work after dark during the crucial harvest. Once in a blue moon it lands late, in October, and we get the double whammy of plunging temperatures and wild erratic dreams.
Ok, now you are thinking..”what is this moron talking about? Why cant he just talk about chocolate?” I’m getting to that.
It is because of this rare later moon that chocolate is capturing both of my worlds; the conscious one and the one I relish-the unconscious one. The dreams are now chocomares complete with harried production deadlines, equipment malfunctions, never ending cauldrons of 300 degree sugars spilling out in endless rivers of skin scorching goo. I awake with a start as visions of the melter somehow becoming un-anchored and 500 kilos of melted chocolate covering my kitchen floors in a layer of slippery money seem all too real. I panic at the thought of the mass mutiny of my staff when they come at me in the night with airbrushes and packing tape guns clutched in their sweaty hands snarling like a pack of zombies hell bent on eating what is left of my diseased brain.
This is the stuff chocomares are made of. Almost every chocolatier I have spoken with about this subject confirms it; we are all afflicted in some way by this. Like the seas our lives are in flux and being pulled by the moon. Its an uncontrollable situation that we learn to ride with or go insane because people are counting on us. Not just our loved ones and our employees, but the chocoholics who need their fix. The people whose pleasures are derived from our work. It is for them we endure this seasonal madness and forge through the labyrinth of terrifying monsters of our own design who only come out at night to taunt us.
Beware!
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