Organic Green and Black

I am a totally disloyal cook. I have been known to bake cakes from the Green and Black recipe book using Lindt chocolate. This does not spring from any ideology, as a humungously busy working Mum it's all about what's in the cupboards. If I were making Nigella Lawson's wondrous chocolate cheesecake and all I had to hand was a bar of Cadbury's, I would not hesitate to go for it. But I do have a fond relationship with the Green and Black cookery book, bought for my birthday by one of my kids who waited till the very last minute to buy it so he could get it at a price so obscenely reduced it was practically free, as he told me gleefully while I unwrapped it (never mind dear, it's the thought that counts, I replied, grinding my teeth). It's just so, well, chocolatey. If I want something so aromatically chocolatey that the memory of prepping it, baking it and eating it stays with me for days afterwards, I will usually plump for this book. Chocolate bread, swirly chocolate shortbread, and chocolate pots, have attracted so many oohs and aahs at the table that they have morphed into birthday and special occasion recipes. Today it was the chocolate swirly shortbread, which on top of the unctuous chocolatieness of it, is the most brilliant craft task, one to do with your kids. Make up two sets of dough, one vanilla and one chocolate. Stick both in the fridge for a bit. Roll each of them out. Put the chocolate one on top of the vanilla one. Throw chocolate chips in the middle. And roll it up like a sausage. The sausage bit requires three people - one rolling one end, one rolling the other, and the third guarding the integrity of the middle bit, hoping that none of the chocolate bits fall out. Unless you are a kid in which case escaping chocolate bits are a perk of the job. They look beautiful when they come out, swirly and lumpy with partly melted chocolate chips. I need to make something beautiful. It is a reward for putting up with a week of commuting while lame. Every time I ease myself on or off a train I cause a commuter pile up. I realise I used to be one of them but why do they all move so FAST? I crawl up the stairs and I can feel the collective will of the people stuck behind me who are clearly itching to pick me up and THROW me up the stairs, or maybe just trample me underfoot. Kids point at the boot and laugh. Well so they should - it's easy to pass off a surgical boot as part of your kit when you're in trackies and one sneaker, but lopsided walking when clothed in a smart suit and hey presto, you are auditioning for a part in next year's Xmas panto. I have ditched the crutches at least, and was quite proud of myself for tucking a smart black patent walking stick under my arm, till my neighbour informed me that the stick, matched with the black raincoat, black boot and the surgical Jedi leg, made me look like a dominatrix. Weird isn't it, that when you are on crutches you get sympathy, when you leave them at home you get laughed at. Ah well. At least dressing like a dominatrix who has sustained an injury for reasons possibly incurred on the day job, means I get a seat every time. Most people who give up a seat for me do it fast, with eyes averted, and the smell of fear.