Vixen Red and Black Dessert

From Views from the Carrot Condo by Trista Cornelius

June 25, 2010

June 20, Sunday night:

OMG!! First of all, I rallied myself to make Ginger-Hoison Noodles for dinner in spite of a dark, rainy, below-60-degrees, “summer” Sunday that had both my man and me lethargic and lost, lounging on the sofa all day, scowling at every jogger to bound past our living room window.

Even more impressive for such a melancholy day, we managed to march ourselves to the grocery store after dinner to do the week’s shopping. We motivated ourselves by agreeing to buy treats for each of us, something sweet and decadent to nurse these Sunday night blues.

Unfortunately, nothing in the store met my craving for a treat—not Coconut Bliss Dark Chocolate Ice Cream, not the vegan trail mix bar from Black Sheep Bakery, not the stores’ vegan chocolate cupcake.

In the checkout aisle, I turned to my man, flexing my fingers dramatically near my belly the way my dance teacher used to do to illustrate where the force of our energy should come from, and I said, “I know what I want: something chocolatey, gooey, cherry-ey!” I dropped my arms in exasperation since nothing like this existed in the store. I’d settled for having plain, dark cherries, but the craving would not subside.

Once home, I followed my gut, my gastronomical intuition. I put a small handful of dark chocolate chips (dairy-free) into the white, porcelain bowl a friend gave me, added maybe three tablespoons of coconut milk (the real stuff that pours out all thick and frothy, not the “lite”) and barely melted the chips in the milk (30 seconds in our Paleolithic, low-power microwave). Then, I sliced dark cherries in half, pitted them, and tossed at least a cup and a half into the bowl.

I stirred the milk and chips from the bottom of the bowl, expecting to see watery-white milk and pieces of un-melted chocolate, but instead, a rich, black fudge covered the cherries and filled the hole left from the pit. It tasted like the best fudgy-brownies you’ve ever had with dark cherries so juicy and firm it was like they grew on the tree already candied.

Nothing in the entire grocery store could have been as good as this. Nothing in the city, the state, and at least for the few minutes it took me to eat it, nothing in the whole country as good as this. I moaned and groaned in ways best left to adult audiences and tried to eat slowly to extend the deep-down pleasure of this vixen red and black dessert, but the bowl emptied too fast.

As I savored my dessert rapturously, my pet turtle ate some dark cherries from her cage behind me on the dining room shelf. Dark cherries are her favorite food. She hooks half of one in her beak, then flings it around to get a bite, blood-red juice splattering on her face and the back of her shell, making her look like a gory, victorious hunter in the wild. A few bites into my ecstasy of a dessert, I turned to my turtle. Her orange-rimmed eye, slightly glazed with pleasure, met mine--two ladies enthralled. “I had no idea, Girl!” I told her, “No idea!” She imperceptibly tipped her beak in acknowledgement of my slow path to enlightenment then dove in viciously for another bite.

Truly—there is no dessert better than this. I only hope when I make it again tomorrow, I can make it just as good. Often, nothing is ever as good as the first time; however, in my experience, sometimes the pleasures slow in coming are the most rich, abundant, and deep.