This year's chocolates...

Waiting in Albuquerque airport.... I now have confirmation that every long-distance recipient has now received theirs, so I won't spoil any surprises. Among the proposals and home crises and travel this week, I managed (with significant help shopping by tenacious_snail, making by patgreene and drop-offs by cyan_blue) to make homemade chocolate truffles and send them out in various decorated boxes to my various layers of sweetie-dom. There's actually an algorithm for who gets how many, based on relationship type and years of seniority (I won't explain, other than Pat gets at least double what anyone else does ;) and modified for dietary restrictions. It sounds more complex than it actually is, in practice.

Anyway... this year's basics:

- Traditional truffle rolled in Valrhona cocoa powder (most intense chocolate flavor, IMO)
- Regular truffle, dipped in chocolate (less messy on fingers)

And this year's specialty fillings:

- Intense orange-flavored, dipped and with chocolate sprinkles (lovely sweet-tangy, and an improvement over last year's)
- Mole-flavored, dipped with ground cinnamon sprinkles (cayenne, chipotle, and cinnamon... sweet sparkly rush, followed by a slow tingle)

The base for these this year came mostly from ground Lindt bittersweet and 61% local Guittard, using Ghiradelli for the specialty bases, and blended with heavy whipping cream and other flavorings (I didn't promise to reveal *all*... ;).

Tired, but successful

I was up nearly all of last night -- I took an hour nap between 6-7am -- and successfully drafted, proofed, and produced two 40-page research proposals in time for today's submission deadline. After just 4 hours, the night before. Meanwhile meeting here in Albuquerque over how best to heat and process lunar soil to make oxygen. I finally met with my task lead here, and it went well, and I will have a budget and enough authority to start making the November Mauna Kea demonstration happen.

I've also made and shipped chocolates for Valentine's (previous post), supported patgreene in her ongoing work trauma, gone to ice skating lessons, and travelled here despite the snowy weather and delays on Wednesday. As well as getting sick for 24 hours on Monday and Tuesday. It has been an intense-but-successful week, thus far.