Let me begin by saying I am on a pretty strict diet. It's one of those well-balanced, low-sugar, low-fat, heart healthy type diets, the likes of which can be wrecked, for example, by drinking too much juice or milk in a given day, let alone deciding to go hog wild on treats.
Look at what is sitting in my fridge this very instant. Leering at me, in all their glory. Laughing scandalously because ha! they are ridiculously tasty and I cannot have any.
By Sunday there should be at least four times as many chocolate-covered strawberries I cannot touch. Plus a tray of sausage and peppers. And bacon-wrapped scallops. Already there are various salamis and cheeses and the most heartbreaking selection of crackers I'm not allowed to even think about. There will be cucumber sandwiches. Oh and angel food cake that I'm baking myself.
See, I am part of an artist's coalition that puts on very lovely shows on a pier in Red Hook. This time my work assignment is food supervisor for Sunday, which means that I spent the entire day today with the food chair at an industrial restaurant-supply grocery (oh my word) and Costco, lugging around untold masses of food and snacking away on free samples like it was my job.
When I came home, I decided I ought to try my hand at tempering chocolate in preparation for all the chocolate-covered strawberries I capriciously included on my menu (because it was suggested I have fruit, and to a girl required to eat servings of fruit and salad with every meal, I jumped at the opportunity to cover said fruit in something completely unhealthy). To be honest, if anyone else found cheese-injected, prosciutto-wrapped or beer-battered strawberries appealing, I may have offered those as well.
It turns out it is exceedingly easy to temper chocolate. Perhaps I have just discovered the single greatest cause of the obesity epidemic in America. Why has no one told me how easy it is to make pots and pots of molten chocolate?! You know what, I'm not going to complain -- I should be thankful I haven't discovered it until just now.
I was pretty restrained at first. I decided not to have a lunch meal, having snacked so much at Costco. I was the model of discipline and will-power. As I began heating chocolate and Crisco (did you know the best dipping chocolate is mixed with lard??), I resolved not to eat any. Okay or maybe just one, to make sure the flavor and consistency was decent, but only after I'd prepared them all and let them cool properly in the fridge (I still have not had any).
But that doesn't mean I can't lick the whisk when I'm done, right? Oh or take a spoonful out of the melted chocolate for quality control...
After dipping the test container of strawberries, I found myself suddenly overwhelmed with extra warm, delicious chocolate. 
Thinking fast, I grabbed the rest of a package of almonds and dumped them in. That's almost healthy, right? While they cooled on wax paper, I sliced a kiwi and dipped it in, fondue-style. When I realized I was going to waste the precious chocolate clinging to the sides and bottom of the pan, I got half a piece of bread and scraped every last drop out of it.
I think, just maybe, I have had enough chocolate.
I will be living with all this ridiculous deliciosity just staring me down for the next two days, mocking me every time I go to make an egg-white omelette or grab some low-fat cottage cheese. Suddenly that broccoli and mushroom pita bread pizza I was planning for dinner is not looking so appealing...
(If you do not hear from me for a few days, I probably have lapsed into a food coma and/or had a rapid heart-attack from overwhelming rapture as I lost my mind and ate every last thing in the fridge. Know that I went happily.)
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