chocolate day!

Every year, on MLK day, the Ferres (my second family since childhood) host chocolate day, a feast of chocolate desserts. As a way to get through the winter, the Ferres have created a series of themed dessert days: chocolate day is followed by lemons on Groundhog Day and cherries on President's Day. And last year, at my prompting, they added a coconut day. But chocolate day was first. Elayne (friends since we were twelve) is always worried about what people might think about the potentially un-pc image of a chocolate feast on MLK day, so she tells some elaborate story about the day's origination in an attempt to provide some legitimacy within the scope of race relations, but I can't remember the details, and really the day is incidental. I mean, what's the connection between lemons and groundhog day? But I find it awfully entertaining to watch Elayne worry. Anyway, this year's menu:

Mocha Cheesecake
Chocolate Cream Pie
Mint Chocolate Brownies
Chocolate Oreo Cake
Some kind of butterscotchy, rice crispy chocolate bar
And my contribution:


Mini Black and White Cookies (hey, might as well get into the spirit of things. remember that Seinfeld episode with the black and white cookie?):

JERRY: The thing about eating the Black and White cookie, Elaine, is you want to get some black and some white in each bite. Nothing mixes better than vanilla and chocolate And yet somehow racial harmony eludes us. If people would only look to the cookie all our problems would be solved.

ELAINE: Your views on race relations are fascinating. You really should do an op-ed piece for the Times.

JERRY: Look to the cookie Elaine. Look to the cookie.


While consuming his second piece of chocolate cream pie, Elayne's 6-yr-old son declared, "Chocolate day is my best day." And another of the many kids stated rightly that on chocolate day you need lots of water: "Lots and lots of water."