The Chilli/Chocolate Combination

 So here it is, as an 89th episode spectacular (and mostly because I can't be bothered tocome up with anything new today but want to stick to my once-a-week, doing-one-of-these-every-Wednesday kinda thing), my first (and so far only) published bit of rambling. Huzzah and joy and such. You can see the original broadcast of this one courtesy of those lovely people at Gumbo Press who make Word Gumbo, free and online. Based on its second-issue-from-August theme of "Opposites", this little bit goes on in very much the same way as the rest of my bollocks, in the way that I have a boring life which I attempt to make more interesting by using long words. And now that my back-up option is gone, it means from now on I'll have to actually write something every single week. Enjoy a wee slice of my typings past.

Have you ever tried chilli and chocolate? I haven't, but I imagine it to be absolutely awful. Although, having said that I don't really like chilli, so the fact that I'm using it in an argument seems somewhat redundant. It's not the chilli per se, but all hot and spicy food in general. Evidently, my tongue lacks the capacity it would normally need to have what you could call an "extensive palette", and instead decides to ignore any taste provided by such spices in lieu of screaming out 'Oh, my God, why? WHY?! The pain! Seven-thousand fire-tipped needles of pain, na na na, na na na, no we don't like vindaloo'. Fortunately, my tongue doesn't have a mouth of its own thus can't verbalise such exclamatory-ness whenever faced with such a situation at a formal dinner party (although, the idea of a formal dinner party that serves vindaloo as its main course seems a whole other situation altogether). But I digress...

I could've said "Have you ever tried cheese and chocolate?" since I can cope with cheese. I quite like cheese. In fact, half the time I order a pizza in, I'm a little tempted to leave all the extra toppings, ask them to hold the tomato sauce, and just forget the bread while they're at it in the hope that they'd be so kind as to just bring me a box of melted cheese, but I'm getting away from myself again here. I can't imagine cheese and chocolate being too complimentary. I mean for one thing, they both start with "ch" and end with "e"; it's a marriage made in Hell. (Moments after typing that, I noticed that "chilli" also starts with "ch" so had to add the thing about the "e" at the end too to make my point somehow appear valid.)

But I suppose the reason people like the chilli/chocolate combination comes down to their apparent oppositeness. Things just tend to work well together when accompanied by something on the other end of the scale: light and shade, sweet and sour, Philip Schofield and Holly Willoughby, they all manage to not overpower the other one. There's even more, an almost endless list of opposites that attract (which I won't go into on account of the fact that I'm already about 400 words into this and the fact that I'd like to go to bed sometime tonight), so why did I open with the food one?

Well it would be a bit rubbish if I didn't answer that question considering (a) the question has now been imposed unto the world, and (b) you didn't actually ask it, dear reader, but are now filled with moderate intrigue as to why I posed the question in the first place in the vague hope you get an answer to satisfy the aforementioned intrigue, meaning that I must now (a) come up with something which I suppose could validly be considered an appropriate answer, and (b) not go to bed.

Umm...

Ahh...

Oh, OK, how's this for ya? I've very recently become somewhat addicted to culinary ventures. I suppose (in my head) that's a fancy way of saying 'I like cooking', but of course it gets pretty tough trying to cook something exquisite when you're a student and you're essentially living off beans, mouldy bread and half an onion. Also I have a not-so-broad palette, did I mention? Therefore, I get my cookery fix from the magic picture-emitting machine in the corner of the room. I suppose I like to think that if this whole University course ends up falling through, or leaving me with no options, or Deal Or No Deal doesn't accept my application, or it does but when I get there I don't get my hundred grand, then at least I could try my hand at cooking.

Maybe not professionally, mind. That whole 'yes chef, no chef, three haggises full chef' malarkey, where Gordon Ramsay ends up saying the f word just because he fuckin' feels like it would probably get me down after a short while. But if I managed to end up in a Greasy Spoon somewhere, making tried-and-tested breakfasts for construction workers, et cetera, it wouldn't be the most terrible thing to me. Because right now, I know terrible. Terrible is sitting in front of the TV, watching people making the perfect duck à l'orange with glazed carrots and dauphinoise potatoes and other such things that sound really fancy while I'm chowing down on my third packet of Super Noodles of the day (and my sixteenth packet of the week).

So there. There's opposites. There's me, sat in a pokey little flat boiling a kettle for a living, versus the chefs working some amazing culinary processes on the best cuts of meat imaginable. I guess you could say that's more juxtaposition, or contrasting, but for the purposes of this little (well, I say 'little') rant about nothing in particular, I'm going to call it opposites. So there we have it. Opposites like chilli and chocolate complement each other, opposites like braised beef and wafer-thin ham make you feel terrible.

I suppose you could say they're opposites.