A small crisis at my house Thursday night.

I had drinks at my house with a colleague I hadn’t spoken to in yonks. We had work stuff to do, but also wanted to be informal. I served guac, she brought tortillas, there was some tequila. As it turned out, she’d been up all night the night before with a sick kid… and thought she was OK. She wasn’t. I’ll spare you the gory details, but remember how I’m an emetophobe? THERE WAS VOMIT. IN MY HOUSE. Sure, not mine and all in the bathroom, but I was in agony.

I exhibit some symptoms of shock when faced with the phobia: my heart races, there’s anxiety, and I don’t really know what happens during the time. At some point after she left, I realised I needed to clean. Everything. So I could prevent this from spreading to me…

So I cleaned, I guess. The evidence suggests it, but I don’t altogether recall it.

After I cleaned, well… as per usual with these sorts of things, a nap resets and then I’m fine. It’s just a shame that I ended up napping while my enviro cloths were boiling away on the stove top.

I didn’t wake up until the smoke alarm was going and the air was thick with white, toxic smoke. Great. The pot had run dry and was burning… how do I *do* these things?!? I put the pot on my back porch (burning a hole into the rubber coating on top of the stairs), after taking in enough smoke to fell a horse, and opened the doors and windows, as I fanned the smoke alarm to MAKE. IT. SHUT. UP!!!! I’d like to show you the damage of 2 enviro cloths reduced to nothing but black matter adhered to the bottom of my pot, but, oh yeah, I broke my camera this morning.

Seriously: there was nothing left of the cloths. What are we up to? Fail #3? Well, let’s add #4: the pot is wrecked. The intense fusion of cloth-to-metal will not be coaxed free. Damn.

I called my friend and told her what happened. She said, “you know that response isn’t normal, right?” I said “Yes. And in the 18 years we’ve been friends, I would have thought you’d grown out of expecting that of me.” And then she said “just buy a new pot. They’re practically disposable these days.” And I said “no, I think this is the universe helping me to move. I am sentimental and have trouble letting go, but now I won’t have to: destruction is doing it for me.”

I got up the next morning and it was as if all was forgotten, aside from the lingering stench of burning in my house.

And that’s when I turned to the good:

Welcome to:

the Fudgy Chocolate Protein Waffle

You need:

™ 1/3 cup oatmeal, pulverised into powder (with a blender of some sort)
™ 2 Tbsp darkest unsweetened cocoa powder ALIVE
™ 1 Tbsp psyllium husks
™ 2 Tbsp ground flaxseed
™ 1 egg
™ 1/4 cup unsweetened chocolate almond milk
™ 1/2 scoop chocolate whey protein powder
™ 1/4 cup cottage cheese

You must:

≈ whisk the pulverised oatmeal, cocoa powder, psyllium, and flaxseed in a medium-sized bowl, and set aside.
≈ blend cottage cheese until smooth, and add protein powder, egg and almond milk. Blend again.
≈ mix wet and dry ingredients. It’ll be a pretty dense batter, but if it’s too dense, add more almond milk, 1 Tbsp at a time. (You really shouldn’t need more than another 2, max).
≈ spoon onto a prepared waffle iron—yields two.

Now, these are the definition of unsweet. I love that about them—they’re just deeply chocolatey, especially if you use good-quality and the darkest cocoa you can find (like Callebaut). If you like things sweeter, you’ll want to add 2 Tbsp of sugar / maple syrup to the wet ingredients.

And as the voice of experience, today I tried making them with a paler (Dagoba) cocoa powder and 1/2 cup of egg whites instead of the egg… and they were pale and horribly dry. So using the real egg is key, and: dark, dark, dark.

I served them with a dollop of unsweetened vanilla yogurt cheese dusted with more cocoa powder, but… choose your own adventure.

These made my heart sing. Bye bye bad, hello…. goodness!

Rejoice, dear blogosphere, for I am absorbing the negative energy of the universe and allowing you to frolic.

And in light of this, I must focus on the positive. That’s chocolate. So, after a post about yoga, I’m devoting the next 5 posts to chocolate, in all its forms. Hold on, kids, it’ll be a wild ride.