Chocolate for Breakfast: Anne Commits Her First Utterly Divine Food Sin

There’s no doubt that the correlation between healthy and aphrodisiac foods is a healthy one with lots of fruits and veggies, fish and not meat, low starches. If I eat a small amount of Maya Gold Green & Black’s organic dark chocolate for dessert, I’ve ‘sinned’ with pleasure, but didn’t break my calorie bank budget.

In a minor moment of rebellion just now, I ate one tiny square of chocolate at 10:30 am. I believe this is a first in my life, and I like it.

Crazy as it sounds, I’ve never deliberately taken on ‘sin’, but the notion is on my mind lately, as part of a larger topic on consuming pleasure responsibly.

Eating, sex, shopping — we Americans have a guilty relationship with pleasure. As a result we binge, not consume responsibly.

I adore the Maya Gold chocolate that I just ate, and hopefully its aphrodisiac properties will go to work straightaway. It will be like summer in New York today, mid-to-high 80s.

Feeling ‘light’ and guiltless is key to a positive sensuality.

I don’t mean ‘thin’, I mean ‘not-sluggish’ when I say ‘light’. One should be mobile, graceful, and full of energy — and not so concerned with body shape, or minor bumps and bulges.

It the same with ‘sin’. Consider that the most pleasure-loving people in the world — Italians, French and Brazilians — all live in Catholic countries. Although I was raised Catholic, I sense there’s something these cultures know about sin that we Americans don’t.

Writing that this morning was my first chocolate morning food sin, but I remembered chocolate croissants in Paris. As long as chocolate croissants are consumed in Paris — making them a rare and unique experience for an American woman — I say ‘indulge, if we must’.

But doing a bit of research on chocolate croissants and landing on this Warm Chocolate Croissant Bread Pudding recipe, I admit to sighing and feeling ambivalent about giving you the link. This seductive recipe is loaded with fat and heaviness. It may be divinely comforting in our minds and mouths, but it’s bad for our libidos and our hearts.

We can’t have everything we want. This is the fundamental plank of responsible pleasure. Choose wisely, my dears.

Now I’m becoming truly excited. What if my dietary message is to ‘indulge’ not ‘deny’. Go ahead and eat a square of chocolate at 10 o’clock on Saturday morning. Just try not to eat the whole bar and please, please skip the Warm Chocolate Croissant Bread Pudding.

On the road to a more passionate ‘me’ (could be deadly, given my already active libido), I eat with total engagement and absolutely no denial. Pursuing a diet of aphrodisiacs, I also eat only healthy food. This idea is really percolating in my mind now.

Also, I’m feeling more devilish than usual, feeding you ‘no no’ recipes, to test your commitment to sexy eating.

Please note that I would probably throw a cut-up date or two in that arugula and pomegranate salad. As I wrote in my Journal this week, eating dates add an entirely new layer of texture to the art of swallowing. Anne