As you know I have been reading Chocolat (you know since I mention it practically every day, right?). For me this is a perfect February book. In case you don't know the story--it is set in the little French village of Lansquenet in the 1950s. "We came on the wind of the carnival. A warm wind for February, laden with the hot greasy scents of frying pancakes and sausages and powdery-sweet waffles cooked on the hot plate right there by the roadside, with the confetti sleeting down collars and cuffs and rolling in the gutters like an idiot antidote to winter." Vianne Rocher and her daughter Anouk are a bit like gypsy wanderers, but Vianne wants to finally set down roots somewhere. Why not Lansquenet. There she opens a chocolaterie across the street from the village church---during lent. This novel is a most delicious novel in every sense of the word (I think so anyway). So on this Valentine's Day I offer to you a virtual Valentine (of sorts anyway)...and one you can enjoy that is fat free:
"I (Father Reynaud) looked into the display window this morning. On a white marble shelf are aligned innumerable boxes, packages, cornets of silver and gold paper, rosettes, bells, flowers, hearts, and long curls of multicolored ribbon. In glass bells and dishes lie the chocolates, the pralines, Venus's nipples, truffles, mendiants, candied fruits, hazelnut clusters, chocolate seashells, candied rose petals, sugared violets...Protected by the sun by the half-blind that shields them, they gleam darkly, like sunken treasure, Aladdin's cave of sweet cliches. And in the middle she has built a magnificent centerpiece. A gingerbread house, walls of chocolate-coated pain d'epices with the detail piped on in silver and gold icing, roof tiles of florentines studded with crystalized fruits, strange vines of icing and chocolate growing up the walls, marzipan birds singing in chocolate trees...And the witch herself, dark chocolate from the top of her pointed hat to the hem of her long cloak half-astride a broomstick that is in reality a giant guimauve, the long twisted marshmallows that dangle from the stalls of sweet-vendors on carnival days...From my own window I can see hers, like an eye closing in a sly, conspiratorial wink."
Happy Valentine' s Day everyone!