Chocolates.

Back to work tomorrow.   The weather being dreary and requests on our time this year seeming to be more, I've not had the same opportunities to descend into that state of midwinter dreamtime that I love, but which can be painful to climb out of.  But today, on the eve of returning to work, the skies cleared and the temperature became unkindly, beautifully cold, and I made special provision to pass the time in a good way.

We took a long walk in the morning, and came back zinging with the chill, to a couple of glasses of ginger wine, and I cooked some potatoes, carrots, onions, peas and celery in stock and threw in the last tin of Royal Game soup I found in the cupboard the other day - a makeshift meal which I always enjoy.

Then after that I decided I'd put it off long enough, and opened the box of chocolates.

Yes, I know, jaded palates and extra kilos, but this was quite literally something else.

Johann Dubois is a chocolate boutique like no other, and there are a few good ones about here (there's no website and very few links available, that one is to a regional newspaper article when it opened).  It's quite a recent arrival in St Brieuc and Sylviane, my boss and student, decided to give it a go.  I went in there once and spent my last disposable few euros on two macarons, one for me and one for Tom.

Everything about this box of chocolates is a transcendent experience.  I approached it with reverence.  I sat with it open on my knee and carefully read the little booklet of descriptions until my mouth watered, and tried to identify each chocolate I could see before deciding to pick one out.

The one that looks like a blue marble is called 'Tempête', a salted butter caramel (caramel au beurre demi-sel).  The white fleck on the one to the left of it is a whole oat grain, because that one is called 'Terre', a ganache made with caramalised grilled oats( ganache à l'avoine grillé caramalisé).  I haven't eaten either of those yet. The light green glitter on the one in the very top left corner bespeaks it to be 'Rêve', another ganache with flavoured with an infusion of  lemon verbena and mint (verveine menthe).  I did eat that one because I felt that didn't sound so promising, and was therefore better consumed sooner rather than later, but it was utterly heavenly.

The green-gold marble is another caramel, 'Amazone', lime flavoured on a background of nutmeg (citron vert sur fond de muscade), and above it, out of shot, was the rather smarmily named 'Femme', a dark oblong with a flash of metallic pink which was flavoured with rose and litchi.  I tried that one too, and again, though the descriptions and combinations of flavours sound bizarre, they are in fact complex, sumptuous and transporting, and need to be lingered over and held in the mouth for a very long time.

CS Lewis said that this rarefied, exquisite form of gluttony was quite as bad as the old-fashioned, Land of Cockaigne, pigging-out kind, but I don't know.  If I had to give up all the bars of fruit-and-nut all year just to be able to enjoy this pleasure once, I think I probably would.  The growing, making and presenting of these is done with art and beauty and integrity - the chocolate that goes into them is fair-traded and the shop makes much of the provenance of its materials.  If you're ever anywhere near St Brieuc, and you've an arm and a leg to spend on chocolate, get yourself down there.

A good way to start the year.