Chocolate Covered Snow Days

I'm all for snow days- but this is freakin' ridiculous! Last night, an unexpected snow fall crept up on us. It followed a teachers conference on friday (no school) and then Martin Luther King Jr. Day yesterday. There's been so much indoor family time that I'm craving a cigarette, and I don't smoke. All the TV and junk food is making everyone around here blobular and hazy-lazy. After learning of the school cancellation this morning, I decided Mom's School was in session. I gave them pages of math problems to do, then onto spelling, composition, Hebrew, art, reading, and PE (jump rope). Music appreciation comes in the form of several of my playlists. Home Ec was all about making a decent grilled cheese sandwich. Right now the drama/theater unit is being executed with the construction of a school bus out of a large cardboard box, and then they plan on reenacting their bus ride home from school. The ban on TV started yesterday and continues through today.

In the meantime, while playing the schoolmarm, I have my own stuff that needs to get done. I have to get to the market to restock after this 5 day indoor nosh and sloth-fest. I need to work on a few dishes for the c-book. If my editor approves, I want to come up with some recipes for chocolate barks: a milk, a dark, and a white. Valentines Day is almost here, and it is the heart (pun intended) of chocolate season. I need to at least try to conjure up some business, and that means strategic free samples. The flavor-of-the-season is Black Forest Surprise. It's a cherry infused dark chocolate ganache center with a pleasing surprise in the form of a dried cherry slipped in. It's covered in a layer of white chocolate and then finished off with a dusting of dark chocolate shavings.

I'm gaining weight and losing muscle tone as I write. Like the very hungry caterpillar we've eaten through 1 cookie jar of junk chocolate, 1 pint of ice cream, 1 bag of pretzels, a six pack of chocolate pudding, ten ounces of hot choco mix, and a box of cocoa puffs. For the sake of my sanity, or at the very least, my somewhat shaky equilibrium- there better be school tomorrow. If we're home for another day we might have to host a Chocolate Intervention. Gather the truly hopeless and broken-down and snowed-under over for a chocolate devouring orgy. That's if I have anything left. I might have to break into my emergency Guittard and Ghirardelli chocolate chips; dark, milk, and white- like a chocolate themed MLK Jr. Day celebration.

This is the part of winter I dislike the most. When you get to the I-don't-know-what-number-snow-day-this-is Snow Day. The snow today is really slushy, it's raining now, and the kiddles had some fun shoveling it from our driveway. It reminded me of the white coconut ice they sell on the street corners in New York in the sweltering summer months. If only...