Not everyone loves Valentine’s Day. In fact when I talk to some people about Valentines Day their reaction is to sneer at it and talk about “crass commercialism.” I’m not sure what to answer to that because of course it is quite true and I can only offer “But this is a day to eat more chocolate! Why the hate? Have some chocolate!” A friend of mine hated it because she thought that it was silly to celebrate on just the one day when you should celebrate it every day. To which I answered ”But this is a day to eat more chocolate! Here, have some chocolate!”

Chocolate and I are sort of new found lovers. For the first 17 years of my life I hated the stuff and every time I was given some chocolate I would pass it onto my sister. A couple of times I got curious about what it tasted like and ate it only to and how do I put this delicately…I would throw it up afterwards. I didn’t understand why anyone would want to go through that every time that they ate chocolate (I didn’t understand that my reaction to chocolate was not normal and thought that everyone did this)  and I left it alone until I was at uni.

It was then that our love blossomed and I came to love and appreciate chocolate-in moderation of course. I know that there are people that have been saying lately that sugar is the cause of obesity and should be regulated or banned for minors but I still believe that everything should be eaten in moderation. Also I am one of those difficult people that if you banned me from doing something, I will only want it that much more

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I was shopping a few months ago and suddenly hungry (you see why I fear running out of food? ) picked up a chicken burger from a burger chain restaurant. I paid for my burger and stepped off to the side and waited. They called me over when it was ready and Mr NQN sat down with me while I ate it. I removed it from the bag and took it out. “oh no, they gave me a mini burger instead” I said getting up to return to the counter.

“I’m sorry but I think you gave me the mini burger instead of the regular one” I said sliding the bag across.

The person behind the counter had a look inside and said “Sorry ma’am, that is the regular sized burger.”

“But… it’s tiny! It’s a…burger for ants!” I said lost for words so I just paraphrased Derek Zoolander.

I am used to things shrinking and being smaller from when I was little. After all how many of us could swear that Big Macs have shrunk or that the ice blocks that used to be enormous are now a shell of their former selves also lacking the taste that you remember waxing lyrically about. Perhaps we were smaller or perhaps they had shrunk-who knows. But a year? I haven’t grown in a year!

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I used to work for a man who didn’t mind when I called him Voldemort, Harry Potter’s dark lord of evil. That kind of gives you an indication of how strange and twisted he was. Having said that, he wasn’t 100% awful, he definitely had moments of being kind and nice but mostly, and until he got married he was a strange tyrant that you could hear demanding things like a petulant baby his loud vice roaring across the room “All I want is….” was a frequent cry.

“Expecto Patronum!” I used to mutter under my breath during this time. Luckily he only had the vaguest understanding of the Harry Potter series. These two words in the book were what Harry or other wizards would say when needed a protector and a weapon against predators and Dementors. I was hoping that the spell would work to appease tyrannical bosses.

The Harry Potter series is one of my favourite series of books, ever. I’m not much into the fantasy genre but there was something that immediately grabbed me (and millions of others). I love the way the author J.K. Rowling’s mind works and how imaginative she is. And like with many of my favourite books there is also an element of food. One of the foods that she created was Bertie Bott’s Every Flavour Jelly Beans. These are like muggle or non magical jelly beans except that there is a huge range of flavours good and bad. Alongside more regular flavours there were ones like earwax, bogey, vomit and dirt. As such they were marketed as “Bertie Bott’s Every Flavor Beans – A Risk With Every Mouthful!”

And I woke up one day and said out loud in excitement “These would be perfect for Halloween!”

I didn’t quite have any inclination to replicate a vomit flavoured jelly bean but I decided to make jelly beans in a variety of flavours including some not so nice or non traditional jelly bean flavours mixed in with your regular flavours. Having a look in my spell cupboard… ahem pantry I took out the following flavours: coconut, chocolate, pear, black pepper, lemon myrtle, vindaloo curry, violet and strawberry and paired them with colours.

Finding a recipe for jelly beans was hard-very hard indeed. What I realised is that nobody really makes jelly beans because they are easy and cheap to buy. But because I was under the Confundus charm spell I paid no heed of the warning and made a batch without having any molds and they just melded into one and didn’t look even vaguely jelly bean shaped. I regrouped and bought some molds that in truth look more like mini Easter egg molds than jelly bean molds although they were sold as the latter, and made them again. The flavour of these jelly beans was  distinct. Clear and quite scary for people picking up a red jelly bean and expecting a hot cinnamon or strawberry jelly bean and instead getting a mouthful of garlickly vindaloo!

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