Snoqualmie

You scoundrel! I'm not the kind of girl you spread chocolate on!

I have an assignment for my Anthropology of Food class tomorrow which involves tracking the ingredients of a processed food item to find out their commercial source and historical trajectory. Since my house is typically stuffed to the brim with a combination of fresh produce and unlabeled bulk items, and I really didn't feel like going and buying a processed food item for this project, I scrounged briefly around the pantry and eventually came up with a jar of Nutella to investigate. It fails one recommended criterion of the project in that it's not a food I actually eat -- Nutella has milk in it -- but in general I have few objections to researching cocoa, sugar, hazelnuts and vanilla. So that's what I've been doing for the last hour or so.

Now I have a terrible problem. My roommate was up until 8:00 this morning (insert obligatory co-op drug reference here) and has gone to bed early. I've politely turned off most of the lights in the room while I continue to work. Because our room is directly in the path of people walking up and down the stairs, I find it necessary to shut the door to avoid distraction; hence, the door is presently shut.

What I'm saying here is that I'm sitting behind a closed door in a dimly-lit room with a jar of Nutella and reading a lot of propaganda from marketing coucils about how deliciously sweet and creamy hazelnuts and cocoa butter are. It's just me and the jar here, with no one to tell what indiscretions we may get up to. Omnivores, suppress your expressions of triumph -- my dietary virtuousness is defended by the imposing combination of my questionable willpower and a house policy against hoarding spoons in bedrooms. Then again, if I go downstairs to get another cup of tea, and that tea requires a spoon for stirring, well, the prospects for this battle may get somewhat bleaker.

Bleaker, but more delicious.