The Saga of the Truffles: Part 1

Hi there. Long time, no see. How are you? Doing well, I hope? 

It's been a while. And by a while, I mean a few days. And I don't know about you, but these last few days have been crazy. Insane, actually. Off the hook. I've been given a job, I've been doing many a church-related thing, and we've been having a nasty bout of teething-related, uh, unsettling gastro-intestinal disruptions. And by "we" I mean a certain smallish, excessively smoochable blond fellow. I have done so much laundry, people. SO. MUCH. 

So yes, we've been busy. But you know what else I've been doing? 

I've been making truffles. 

 Why, you may rightfully ask, have I been doing such a thing when I already have such limited time? Why, you may ask, would I put myself through such an arduous frivolity? Why?! (If you think you hear my repressed subconscious echoing these questions, you would be correct. We get pretty grumpy when we're up past our bed time, but more on that in a moment.)

In reply, I have one word: chocolate. Mmk, so two, words, actually: chocolate and pluck (as in pluckily.) My local paper put together a candy-making competition in preparation for the State Fair. The winners get to take their creations to the State Fair, which is pretty cool. But that's not what appealed me; regardless of whether I win, I plan on going to the State Fair . . . mostly because I've never been to one and imagine it's replete with excellent food, home-made crafts, and the farm animals. Like a massive farmer's market, in other words. But with live animals thrown in for fun. Or something.

Anyway, I read the advertisement for the local competition and thought, "Hey. I could do that." And instead of moving on to the next article and forgetting all about it, I pondered what I might need to do if I chose to compete. After a long and tedious deliberation with myself, I decided to do it partially because I really wanted to learn how to temper chocolate, but mostly because I wanted to do something brave.

This is going to be somewhat of a tangent, but I'm going to go with it. Consider this next paragraph a little bonus or something. Remember that saying about how courage isn't the absence of fear, but the choice to act in the face of peril? (In the .5 seconds I spent researching this quote, variations of it have apparently been attributed to everyone from Omar Bradley to Emerson. Oh Internets.) The idea is simply that courage or bravery isn't the absence of fear, but the choice to act rightly when overwhelmed with fear.

I'm a fearful person. I have been for a long time and am so presently, but hopefully will be less so in the future. And every so often, we fearful people need to do doing something outrageous - like enter a candy-making competition. It reminds us that most of the time, the feeling of fear has no bearing on reality. Because God is good, and He casts out fear, and reality is so much more abundant and grace-filled than we so often imagine. Maybe doing outrageous things is part of being more than a conqueror.

I'm having to remind myself of that right now, because despite my efforts to be relatively well-organized and manage my time well, I'm currently up at 11:23 PM waiting for my final batch of ganache to cool so I can coat them in gloriously tempered chocolate, top them with nuts, package them and GO TO BED. I'm not even going to discuss the two emergency trips to Wal-mart that were actually completely pointless and the six - SIX, you treacherous chocolate, you - batches of truffles I've made so far. The contest is tomorrow, in case my frenzy hasn't sufficiently inferred that.

Also, I somehow managed to get chocolate on my face without noticing. I don't know how one does that.

In any case, the point is this: I'm bringing truffles to my local newspaper headquarters t tomorrow. And it's going to be fun, regardless of whether my truffles turn out perfectly or not. Wish me luck and send up prayers!