A few weeks
ago was the one-year-anniversary of last year’s Ash Wednesday. Who cares, I
know.
It was also
the one-year-anniversary of my decision to quit sugar. Woot woot, I know.
Because of
that, like I said back when I wrote about the chocolates I got from my dear
friend in Luxembourg, I ate a bunch of sweets that day. Everything I had kept
(in the freezer, just in case) over that one year, I got out and taste-tested
on the evening of February 14th. Don’t worry, this makes it sound
like a lot more than it actually was.
Here’s what I had:
These are
all the things I thought I should keep because I might want to try them at some
point, if and when I ate sweets again. Because they were limited editions or
because I saw them outside Austria or because they were made by a very special
person who might decide not to make them again or because they were an
important gift.
I’m going
to now go through all of the treats, in order of eating, and rate them on a
scale of 1-5 of whether keeping and then eating them was worth it or I think I
would have been better off continuing to ignore their existence. 5 means
“ohmygodthiswasperfect”, 3 means “whatever, take it or leave it”, 1 means “I
wish I hadn’t just done that…”.
My grandpa
used to work as a baker and Vanillekipferl are one of his specialties. Every
single Christmas, my grandma would bake all kinds of sweets, but never
Vanillekipferl, because they were his and his alone. Now, I’m the one bringing
Christmas cookies and stuff to him and my dad, but he still makes
Vanillekipferl. I make them too, but his are better. This Christmas, he wasn’t
going to bake at all, but then spontaneously did it anyway. My dad was so kind
as to bring me a few and I went ahead and froze three.
They were
the first thing I had, because I wanted my palate to be untarnished by any
other flavors and they were heavenly. It didn’t matter at all that they’d been
frozen for a few weeks, they were still perfect. Melt on the tongue quality,
just delicious. I don’t know if he’s going to make them again, because already
he wasn’t going to, but I’m lucky even if they were his last ones to have had
them at all. They’re what I strive to create when I make them – and when he
tried this year’s batch he said I could take over. Heart exploded with pride
and happiness, obviously.
Score: 5,000,000/5.

All of this
stuff was OK. The pink KitKat was a limited edition that I wanted to try
because of the different cocoa used. I thought it would taste special, but all
I could detect was a mild tanginess, which may well have been my imagination
trying to create something for me (everybody told me it tasted just like any
other KitKat but with white chocolate…). That leads me to the white Twix, which
I wanted to try because it was a limited edition and I was curious about
whether the “insides” would taste different with another kind of chocolate
around them – they didn’t. I know it’s now regular stock and no longer a
limited edition, but they made that announcement after I had already got mine.
The Duplo is special because it’s a limited Christmas edition from Germany and
I hadn’t seen it in any supermarket in Vienna. The Christmas in the Duplo comes
from the fact that it’s supposed to be Spekulatius-flavored. I say supposed to,
because it didn’t really. It was just sweet. Which applies to all of them, the
being sweet. This was obscenely sweet, though, so therefore the extra mention.
Last but not least (I’ll tell you who was least later) was the Ferrero Rocher.
Not a limited or special edition, not something only available outside the
country, not a gift from anyone. But I used to love those things and I have
them at home for visitors, so I added one to my collection.
Score:
KitKat: 3/5
Twix: 3/5
Duplo: 2/5
Rocher: 2/5.
This is the
chocolate my dear friend Nai gave to me in Luxembourg, from Luxembourg, as a
souvenir to remember our trip to Luxembourg. I had no idea what was in them
beforehand, so each one was like a box of chocolates, you never know what
you’re going to get. I figured it out by taste for most of them, but because
the sweetness was the main ingredient for all of them, I didn’t catch each
flavor. Here’s what I think they were, from top left to bottom right, although
I have to say “alle Angaben ohne Gewähr” because I wasn’t 100% sure with any of
them, except the caramel one.
Purple with
white splashes: ...cherry
jelly and milk chocolate ganache.
White with
red dust: ...strawberry
through and through.
Light brown
with gold flecks: ...salted
caramel and caramel cream.
Orange with
yellow and black: ...crunchy
hazelnut praline, nougat, and marzipan.
Light green
with red and white: ...I
have absolutely no idea whatsoever.
Red with
green/black/white splashes: ...fruity
jelly and dark chocolate ganache.
Dark brown
with white, blue, and yellow: ...banana
jelly and dark chocolate ganache.
Dark green
with Colombia splashes: ...pistachio
jelly and pistachio cream.
Yellow with
red, green, and more yellow: ...tutti
frutti.
Overall score: 4.5/5.
Important
notice for those who think I’m crazy: of course I didn’t eat all of that! I tried
and tasted and then shared what was left with my very-happy-to-get-to-try-them-too mom.
I like that
I tried all of that candy, because a) it was mostly very good (especially the
Vanillekipferl and the Lux’ian chocolate) and 2) it gave me the opportunity to
make a more informed decision about how to proceed moving forward. That’s
because the second item on my to-do-list for that day was to start thinking
about how I would continue along my no-sugar path, to make a decision over the
next few days. Should I continue with zero? Should I go back to eating
“normally”? Should I find a way in the
middle? Lots of thinking went into this, but in the end my gut made the
decision.
Quite literally.
Gut decision number one: it hurt.
My stomach
hurt. Literally. All night and all of the next morning, there was rumbling and
churning and a bunch of noise going on in the middle of my torso. It was
insane; I haven’t heard anything like it before or since. I mean, wow.
Gut decision number two: it’s not worth the
stress.
I’ll be
honest and say that when it comes to certain foods, especially “sweet crap”, I
feel like an alcoholic or drug addict. It is very hard for me to control my
consumption of sweets when I do not restrict myself and the thought of not
having any rules in place like I did for a year was a gigantic source of
anxiety for the few days I took to make a final decision. I felt tense and
nervous and it was on my mind a lot, which is how I imagine a sober person
feels if somehow they are confronted with their vice and no controls to help
them out. Not that I ran out to get cookies and ice cream and dig in like a
nutcase, but I did get to a point where I dreamed I had had some of the
chocolate in my kitchen (that I buy for visitors, like the Ferrero Rochers) and
I woke up stressed and more tired than the previous evening. I don’t need that
in my life. When I baked the 106 mini muffins I took to the office for my
birthday, I ate the last spoonful of melted chocolate that I had used to
decorate them. In and of itself, that’s not a bad thing. The bad thing is that
I didn’t actually want to eat it. I just did it anyway. It made me feel bad
about myself, angry, and guilty. And I don’t need that in my life either. The
moment I decided to go back to zero, I felt a weight lift off my shoulders. I
felt safe and relieved. That might sound crazy to some, but others will
understand. Either way, honestly, I don’t care. It works for me and that’s
what’s important.
Now, the final verdict: Zero*
What does
zero with an asterisk mean, you ask?
Oh, you
didn’t actually ask?
I’ll tell
you anyway.
Zero* means
that I am continuing the way I described in the post about not having sugar.
There are two *exceptions: new things and special things.
New things means I
make something I have never made before and need to see if the taste is right.
Before, I happened to have company while baking and didn’t have to taste the
thing myself. If I’m on my own when I bake, I will taste what I’m making if I’m
not sure the flavor and/or texture are right. This does not mean actually
eating it, but it means tasting a fingertip or knife point and not wiping my
tongue on a kitchen towel and rinsing my mouth. Yes, I have done that. Get over
it.
Special things means one or two of my grandpa’s Vanillekipferl while
they’re fresh. It means one of my goddaughter’s first ever Christmas cookies
she made with her grandma. It means one select praline candy in a famous
chocolate shop in Luxembourg city. It means a small piece of a new thing I make
that might be something I enjoy or a small piece of a thing I’ve made before
that I know I enjoy. Like day and night brownies, for example. I only make them
every few years, because they’re quite intense (in flavor and calories!), but I
made them for birthday-coffee-and-cake with my family and had a little bit (off
the knife when I cut them and an actual piece at work on Monday, probably
around 3 tbsps in total).
Those are my asterisk.
I like
this. It seems restrictive, but it’s actually freeing.
You know
what, I do care if you get it or not.
I actually
hope you don’t.
It’s no
fun.
But it’s
all good now.