The chocolate hangover

 On Tuesday morning I woke feeling like I'd been on the ale to the tune of several pints or had consumed a couple of bottles of wine the night before. In other words fuzzy headed, slightly sick, and generally grotty. No headache, exactly, but ears ringing and definitely not 100%. Odd, because all I'd had Monday was a glass of red at lunchtime. 

C was first downstairs and had got our granola-and-fruit breakfast ready. I almost didn't eat it, but after a bit felt it was worth a try. It stayed down: so far so good, but by mid-morning I wasn't feeling any better and just mooched about until C started cleaning the hob in the kitchen and I was guilt-tripped into lugging the ancient Dyson up the stairs to vacuum the landing and bedroom. After that I felt poleaxed. A lateral flow test was negative.

I'd been planning on turning up for a volleying workshop at the tennis club but thought better of it. All I could cope with for lunch was a hot-cross-bun and a few grapes. 

Looking for a cause of my affliction, I remembered how badly C had let me down on the day before. To understand the full weight of this betrayal you need to know about our chocolate pact, which is linked to the 'not eating between meals' pact. Basically we limit our access to chocolate to weekends. (Originally this was Saturday and Sunday, but this slipped to include Fridays some time around 2015.) The pact does not apply around special occasions (Christmas, Easter, birthdays, anniversaries, saints days etc) and includes a 'share everything' clause. 

Anyway we had a bar each left from our Studio Chocolate Couples Class, which was a Christmas gift from A and Ca. At the Class C had chosen to work with white chocolate (yuk - obviously there wasn't going to be any sharing) as a base and I chose the dark, which was 55% I think. 

On Monday evening I was peckish and decided a banana would be a reasonable supper. But then C decides "I'm going to have a strip of my chocolate". ON A MONDAY!!! It was like the starting gun! Before I knew it I'd had 2 strips and suddenly C had eaten half her bar! These bars that we made were from moulds that held considerably more chocolate than a standard 100mg bar. In fact they were very hard to break and I wouldn't be surprised if they weighed up to 250mg each!

Anyway I thought I'd match C, and then raised her one by starting on my second half. Then it was 'what the hell, when it's gone it's gone'! Before I knew it my bar was gone and C was putting away half of hers for another day.

(it was the bar on the right)

I was calling it a 'chocolate hangover' before I even checked online for the phrase and, sure enough, it really is a thing!

I'm now starting a campaign to have a limit on the cocoa content of chocolate - and a warning message printed on all products containing any chocolate. Confectionary manufacturers are nothing more than peddlers of an addictive substance that can cause untold misery when abused by the vulnerable and weak-minded. Please sign and share my petition - link below.