From time to time, one needs a treat.Life lays before us like a labyrinth of choice and chance. As we trudge, pace, or even skip along down the winding paths, the pace can become a habit, the turns along unknown alleys eventually becomes repetitive and dreary, the road becomes suspiciously familiar, and the drab daily routine eventually becomes a grind.

Some days  the grind turns cruel, a nascent yet unforgiving process. Like a coffee bean, one may feel pulverized into a dusty remnant, an aromatic and gritty pile bearing little resemblance to one’s true self, unless one’s true self is bitter and sharply flavoured.

After the grind, you might spend days latent in a small brown paper bag, top rolled down snug and secured with an elastic band, left on the butter shelf in the fridge next to cubes of yeast, cough syrup, and bottles of old dried out nail polish, forgotten for years, an embarrassing reminder of the abysmal color sense of an expired lover ( not that she is dead, but simply that the attraction passed, withering both your wallet and, what shall  we call it – your pride.And yet, somehow her nailpolish remains.)

Then one day, you find that the oppressive feel of the brown bag has opened, and that you  are free, free at last! Finally opened to air and light as your are scooped and heaped onto a spoon; then dropped, 15 cubic centimeters at a time, into a french press.

The steaming water comes, at first, as a relief  –  life giving moisture that is a welcomed blessing after feeling desiccated and grainy, dry and scratchy, a crumbled mess – but the relief from the chilling suspense of unknown hours on the shelf is quickly overtaken by the scalding burn, and as all that is good is leached into liquid, your are left behind as  a messy and bitter pile of mud, plunged aside into the bottom of the press. After the  warm nectar is consumed by others, you may feel as if you are a cold damp briquet, barely held together by residual moisture, waiting to be tossed aside – destined for the mass grave of the landfill, or, if your are lucky, the garden mulch.

And so one needs a treat. Something special and tasty, something with wings,  a flutter of hope, the hope for salvation , the promise of sanctuary: the Mallomar.

The Mallomar is a sort of cookie.  The mallomar is the  perfect marriage of graham and mallow. Fluffy, marshmallow-like confect lays atop a soft graham-like cookie, all of which is covered in a waxy Chocolate=like veneer.

To eat a Mallomar, one also needs a beverage….

(to be continued)

copyright 2011 Køt Biehl