#me and my grandma buy the same brand of caramels so she keeps giving me these giant ass bags of em

[kiwibirb1]

Gotta get more caramels wheres that giant ass bag my grandma gave me cause she had extra-

[brokentoasterrr]

i try to never show vulnerability on this blog because i am simply Like That, but i wrote piece of creative writing (ish) about my best friend and i want to share it so here we go

tw for death, implied smoking and drinking and a bunch of other shit. read at your own risk, essentially.

He hates onions. Onions and mushrooms. Still, he eats the noodle stir-fry I make him, with onions and scallions. And the pasta Carbonara with chickpeas instead of bacon, because I'm vegetarian and I like to cook. He eats it despite the uneven pieces of onion speckled throughout creamy sauce that clings to the pasta.

He loves liquorice. I hate it. He buys a bar of liquorice with a caramel center, urges me to try it, so I do. And I like it. But I never eat it again.

He buys a chocolate bar. I'm terrified of germs so when he asks me if I want a bite, I shake my head. The next time he buys a chocolate bar, he lets me break away a piece myself before he does, so I can eat without the anxiety. 

I'm terrified of germs, I'm terrified of becoming ill. I use hand sanitizer until my hands dry out and the skin cracks, wash my hands until my cuticles break apart. He buys me a medium fry from McDonald's, and when I use my hand sanitizer, he doesn't even look at me twice. He stretches his hand out and asks for some. When I don't eat the piece of the fry that my fingers touched, when I put them on a napkin and ignore how anxious it makes me, both to eat and to waste, he nods towards them and says, "Can I eat that?" 

When my hands start to shake because I forgot to eat before I left the house, he drags me to the supermarket. He pays for a chocolate bar, says, "It's better than nothing."

He loves orange and chocolate ice cream. Buys a five litre tub and pays £5 to share with all of us. Ten people. He ends up eating most of it, because no one wanted more than a spoonful or two. I am supposed to go vegan, but I eat some anyway.

He walks around with a lizard made out of fabric and sand in his pocket. Says it's there to keep him company. There's a homeless man at McDonald's. He gives the man the sand filled lizard, and says, "Keep it. So you won't be alone anymore."

I'm angry with my mum. She's left me and my older brother alone again. There's no food in the house and I've eaten pasta with frozen peas and ketchup for three days in a row and I'm angry. I feel neglected and alone. He offers me cigarettes, and acts like a drain in which I can pour all of my problems. He says my feelings are valid, says that love doesn't cancel out the neglect. He puts on some music and makes me laugh.

He never says hello. He says, "Good morning." He never says goodbye. He says, "Good luck."

I'm homeless. Well, not quite. I live in the spare room in my grandma's house, young with no money other than the weekly allowance that I spend on cigarettes. He lets me stay at his house for five days, lets me roll cigarettes with loose tobacco because I can't afford another packet this week. He says, "Do you want to start a business? Two pounds per packet. You get a pound if you help me roll." It sounds borderline illegal, but it's just cigarettes, isn't it? I nod. 

He owns an ATV. It's started snowing but the air is still warm enough that it doesn't lay as a loose powder over the streets, but packs together. The perfect texture for sledding. He ties a sled to the back of his ATV, gives me a helmet. I sit on the sled, he drives. It's the best thing I've ever done in my entire life.

I'm struggling in school. He says that he'll hopefully get a job in another town. The town where I want to go to highschool. He says he'll get a flat, says that maybe we should move in together. One room each, I can cook and do the dishes, and he'll clean and do laundry. He helps me with my homework. He helps me see the end of studying, and gives me something to work towards. A home with my best friend, a school I'll enjoy.

My body doesn't feel like my own. My head says he and him, my body says otherwise. He's the same. My body feels wrong and I want to crawl out of my skin. He knows exactly how it feels. I haven't showered in a week. He tells me to try to shower with the lights off. I don't smell sweaty and my hair isn't greasy anymore.

He loves orange juice. If he could, he'd probably stop eating and only live of off orange juice. I buy him a litre for his birthday, and he grins and laughs. Empty cartons stands around his room, and his fridge is filled with it. I don't like orange juice, but I like apple juice. So I buy the same brand, different fruit. 

He likes to sew his own clothes. Scrap bits of fabric, floss and some free time, and he's patched up a pair of trousers that he decorates with more patches, writes on them, sticks chains and random items onto them. I've never seen anyone sew with floss before, but he does.

He loves dogs. Walks around with dog treats in his pocket in case he runs into a good boy or girl to love for a few moments. 

He loves punk. Listens to it loudly on a Bluetooth speaker and screams along. He dances. I dance and I scream with him and I don't care who watches. When we listen to our song, we stand face to face, jump forward and backwards and scream the lyrics in our faces until we can't breathe. I hear the intro and I slap my thighs in excitement, stand up immediately. "It's our song! Come on!"

I love to ride the bike. He does too. We ride our bikes all over town, listen to our music and feel the wind hit our faces. Mine is pink and purple. Because it's not mine, it's my sister's. His is red, rusty and old. It's his mother's. 

He wears his hair in a mohawk. It's either blue or black, standing straight up, tall and stiff. My hair is green but still boring. He helps me comb it up to liberty spikes. We wear patched trousers with loud chains and soda caps that hit against one another with the tell-tale metallic jangle. People stare and take photos when they think we can't see. We stand up taller, laugh louder.

He feels alone. He's sad, and angry, and alone. It's my turn to act like the drain. So he talks and talks, smokes cigarette after cigarette and I nod as he speaks. Smoke my own cigarette and says that he's valid. What he's feeling is valid.

I move into a group home. My ceiling lamp hangs too low and I'm only 5"4 yet I bump my head against it. He helps me hang it up properly. Jokes and talks about nothing and everything as he hoists it up until I don't bump my head against it anymore.

We make chocolate truffles. Butter and oats and sugar and cocoa powder. A Swedish thing. We cover them in more chocolate and they taste better than anything we've made before.

He hates Christmas. But he buys battery driven fairy lights and sticks them into his mohawk, down to his trousers. He walks around like a goddamn Christmas tree. Because he hates Christmas but other people love it and he wants to make them happy.

He's drunk. It's Christmas Eve and he's so drunk that he has to hold onto the wall to stand upright. I'm on the balcony and he's on the ground and he looks up at me. "I'm so happy," he tells me. "Kevin, I'm so happy. I always want to be like this." I tell him to go home, drink some water and to sleep it off. He goes.

It's New Year's Eve and I'm at my girlfriend's. We drink non-alcoholic wine and cider, kiss when the clock strikes twelve. We're both tired and we go to bed before one in the morning. He calls me, he says that we're going to start a band. Our friend's new partner has a studio and it's one town over but it's okay because we're moving there anyway. "I love you," he tells me. And I tell him, "I love you too."

Our friend texts me the next day. She asks if I had seen him, if I had heard from him. I tell her no. And I send him a text. I hope you're alive, I write, call me. He never does.

Instead it's our friend, the next day. I've just showered and I'm eating breakfast with my girlfriend and her dad. My phone rings. Our friend. My friend. "Axel's dead," she tells me. "They found him in the attic." I scream. I cry. I tell her no. No, he's not dead. It's not true. She's playing a stupid fucking prank with me, she's lying. But when she says that it's true the third time, I believe her. And I break down.

I cry in the car ride home. I make a promise to myself that I'm going to live for the both of us. For three hours, I cry. I listen to music and audiobooks and nothing works to stop the he's dead, he's dead, he's gone. And I cry some more.

I cry when I wake up the next morning because I don't want to wake up in a world without him. 

I stop eating. I stop drinking. I'm nauseous all the time and the ache in my stomach consumes me and I can't eat anything because I am terrified of throwing up.

I cry so much that after three days, I get skin rashes by my eyes from scrubbing my eyes too much. Crying hurts but not crying hurts more. Every breath I take rattles and shakes and I only leave my bedroom to smoke. The staff at the group home tells me to let some light in. I pull my duvet up to my nose.

Axel means shoulder in Swedish. Every time he met someone new, he said, "Hi, my name is Axel and I'm always by your side." He never said that to me. And he never said goodbye, he said "Good luck." 

I get a tattoo. It says good luck on my wrist in his hand writing. And he remains by my side.

[kellyp72]

6 Decadent chocolates worth the splurge

Valentine’s Day may be over, but our love affair with chocolate continues. From its MesoAmerican origins to its migration eastward into the fashionable salons of the European aristocracy, chocolate has captivated our imaginations. Despite its sometimes-dark history and questionable health effects (some sacrificial victims of the Mayans and Aztecs were forced to drink chocolate mixed with blood, and wealthy European elites undermined the supposed health effects of chocolate by (over)processing it with alkaline salts, milk, and sugar), the global market for chocolate continues to expand. And although some of the chocolate that makes its way into retail stores in has been harvested by modern-day child slave labor in cocoa farms in Ghana and the Ivory Coast, the expansion of fair-trade, ethically sourced, and slave-free varieties of chocolate has meant that we can continue to enjoy our chocolate pleasures, guilt-free.

But guilt-free sometimes comes at a steep price.

In the weeks leading up to Valentine’s Day I decided to do a little research (yes, research) on some of the best varieties of dark chocolate I had tasted, and some I eagerly wanted to try. I am still in the process of conducting research (because you can only eat so much chocolate in a day), but here are my initial impressions of some of the best guilt-free chocolate out there. Yes, much of it comes with a hefty price tag, but if you consider the many emotional, physical, and psychological benefits of dark chocolate you, like me, may find it to be well worth the extra few bucks.

Noi Sirius Traditional Icelandic chocolate. At first, I balked at the more-than-$4.00 price tag for this one, but when Whole Foods had a sale on these bars last fall, I decided to take the plunge. Now I am addicted and keep my purse stocked with at least one bar at a time. I realized after opening the package for the first time that it consists of 2 thick chocolate bars, which made it easier for me to justify the expense. One of these bars can last me a few weeks if I don’t share (and no, I don’t share, because it’s my medicine), and am judicious in my consumption. Made by the Icelandic chocolate and confection company Nói Sirius, this chocolate comes in a variety of flavors including chocolate milk, bittersweet, extra bitter (extra dark), coconut, caramel, liquorice, almond, and Icelandic sea salt, my favorite. The sea salt flavor is biting and sharp, but if you like the unique flavor of Skyr (Icelandic yogurt), you’ll love this variety of chocolate pleasure.

Justin’s. The company that was started by a student in Colorado seemingly began by accident. As the company’s website notes, Justin was a vegetarian with an active lifestyle who just wanted his roommates to stop eating his homemade nut butter creations. Putting his name on the jar apparently did nothing to stop the thievery, but it did spark something else in Justin, with the encouragement of friends and family who urged him to sell his unique flavors. Justin’s, like Theo’s below, became a part of our family’s chocolate traditions because of a gift from Grandma. It was the year after my divorce, when Grandma lovingly offered to splurge on gourmet Easter baskets for my 2 kids. Since then, my 7-year old has learned that she can usually wear me down when I refuse to buy her candy (or as I like to call it, “junk”) by begging for Justin’s dark chocolate peanut butter cups while reminding me that it’s actually very healthy and therefore good for her. Touché (sigh).

 UnReal, the “unjunked” food company, sells candy that claims to be made from 100% real, non-GMO ingredients. Their candy contains no gluten, corn, soy, or artificial colors or flavors. It’s vegan, and certified gluten-free. The company also appeals to customers who have a conscience about their chocolate consumption: UnReal’s ingredients are fair trade and sustainably sourced. I recently tried UnReal’s crispy quinoa dark chocolate candies. To be honest, I’m, not yet sure how I feel about them. The texture is a bit strange to me (or maybe just that it’s quinoa, which just sounds like it shouldn’t have anything to do with good chocolate). However, I can’t seem to stop eating them, so I figure they must be pretty good, since I am very picky about my chocolate.

  Theo, the second Easter basket chocolate that came into our lives because of Grandma’s generosity, is all about making, celebrating, and finding inspiration in connections with others to change the world for the better. How exactly do they do that with chocolate? The video testimonials of Theo’s employees suggest a company that is committed to supporting and nurturing all the human elements of its pipeline, from the growers and suppliers to employees and executives, the same way, with care and compassion. As the first fair-trade, organic chocolate factory in North America, Seattle, WA-based Theo claims to practice ethical stewardship an 3rd party verification to ensure that all ingredients and employees involved in the process of making Theo’s products meet the company’s standards for social and environmental responsibility. And the chocolate is pretty darn good, too!

Silly Cow Farms hot chocolate. I bought this because my kids totally guilt-tripped me one winter, as I had apparently promised too many times that I would make them hot chocolate when I could find them some good, fair trade, non-GMO, non-crap chocolate that hadn’t been processed with too many bad things. Leave it to my 7-year old daughter (who was 5 at the time) to not only spot the chocolate mix on the grocery store shelf, but to take the time to read the ingredients and point out to me that this was the kind of good, crap-free chocolate I must have been talking about. Since it was clear that she was not leaving the store without that chocolate unless I was willing to put up with a lot of tears (which I have no problem doing; I must have been in a good mood that day), we picked up a bottle. First, let me say I looove the glass mini milk jug it comes in (that also helped convince me to buy it. Yes, packaging counts for a lot when it comes to chocolate). Second, I have no problem telling you that aside from some incredibly delicious gourmet hot chocolate I imbibed in Paris at some frou-frou café my Paris-based bestie Jenny convinced me to stop in, this is probably the best hot chocolate I have ever tasted, hands down.

Any chocolate in the Chocolate Museum of Paris. One great thing about my job as a professor in is that I am sometimes able to combine research trips with family vacations. A couple of summers ago, my partner and I took the kids along to Paris, where I was giving a talk at an ESCP conference and doing research for my book on Islam and gender activism. One of the unexpected pleasures we got to experience was a visit to the chocolate museum, where we not only got to learn about the “Choco-Story” from its MesoAmerican origins to its present-day innovations, but also were able to sit in on a chocolate-making demonstration and sample the products. Every chocolate we had, from the freshly confectioned, to the gift-store packaged items, was simply fabulous in the way that only the French can do fabulous. If you are a chocoholic like me, and live near or will be visiting Paris, I recommend a stop-over at the Chocolate Museum. Best of all for families with kids, kids visiting the museum are able to “treasure hunt” for special items within the displays and get a special treat afterwards.

Whether you enjoy an occasional indulgence or are a full-blown addict who needs a daily dose of chocolate therapy, I’d love to find out more about your chocolate pleasures.

What gourmet chocolate brands do you recommend?