I have always been slightly afraid of chickens … until now. Last weekend my partner and I had a long overdue opportunity to visit my sweet friend, Georgia and her backyard chickens.  I’ve been meaning to go and see “the girls” ever since she got them, but have never actually been organized enough to catch Georgia while she had some spare time, being the vibrant, involved, active person she is.  She recently finished a cross Canada bicycle journey – the chickens stayed home to bond with her Dad.

It reminds me of playing with pasticine, and since I love plasticine, I am having a very good time.  I guess I am a little obsessed with molding chocolate these days, and have been exploring various media, with varying degrees of success (including some truly frightening gelatine molded avocadoes). This week, I have acquired some culinary grade silicone, and am searching the house for things which will make suitable casts.

The walk through Minoru Park, on my way to rehearsal at the Gateway Theatre is hopping with bunnies.  My co-director and I have named several of them, as their personalities emerge along with their upstanding ears, from the hedgerows.  There is Piggy, Nosy, Brat, Cheeky, the Twins and Stanley. I have also taken (in self-preservation) to carrying bags of “not at their peak” vegetables with me, in anticipation of being met by some very curious, and rather assertive wiggly noses, beady, unblinking, expectant eyes and twitching whiskers.

It seems as though it may finally be spring in Vancouver.  Or, if it isn’t and we have another hailstorm (as happened yesterday), I still feel a desperate need to invent things that will make it feel like spring.  Like that bank of fluffy clouds, lined up in a perfect row across the skyline, as though someone has pushed  a ruler underneath their bottoms.  So white and happy, and not full of rain.

I have been neglecting the white chocolate.  While I have been ganaching, enrobing and molding large quantities of the bittersweet and the milk, the white keeps getting pushed farther and farther back into the chocolate cupboard. And it’s not like it is the white chocolate’s fault.  It’s awfully good stuff of its kind.  There I go, again.  Expecting it to be dark.  Well, it’s not. And this week, I am going to celebrate the fact that it is pale, because it makes a perfect canvas for tinting and its mild sweet flavor makes it perfect for combining with other flavours.

I feel kind of like I am playing with mud pies or clay, this week. And it is great fun. There is still so much material I have to explore in the Ecole Chocolat curriculum, it is a bit like returning to my favourite section of the big downtown library, where the scripts are kept. A mug of coffee, a quiet corner, some peace and quiet, and my fingers get itchy as I suddenly find another technique I need to try. This week, with spring showers keeping the weather cool, it seems like the perfect opportunity to try out some chocolate sculptures.

Okay, first let me say, I know I have a lot to learn. And patience has never been one of my strong personality traits, so perhaps the Ecole Chocolat course, along with generous lashings of yoga class, will eventually bear fruit in helping me to become a more zen-like creature, appreciative of every moment – even the one where I cannot get the molded chocolates I have been watching for hours, to release and drop from the molds.

I’ve had these wonderful little chef hat molds, from Belgium, sitting in a box, just waiting.  Biding their time, until I am ready to attempt the engineering and culinary challenge of double-sided, hollow chocolate molding. I open the box and stare at them.  Darned cute, very detailed.  Lots of crevices that will demand that the chocolate be perfectly tempered, so it will flow into all of the places it needs to go, to create the definition – the pleats in the hat.  These should be sturdy enough to stand up, when finished, with no extra messy “tails” of chocolate trailing out from the bottoms or sides.  They should look like little sculptures.

I am staring at these beautiful chocolate molds. It could be said that I have been helping to make molded chocolate since I was a very small girl. For as long as I can remember, my Mum made “wee chocolate cups” – a recipe and technique she had learned during World War Two, when her Grandmother managed to secure her some contraband chocolate, and Mum shared it with her friends.  One friend showed them all how to make these, filled with whatever they could concoct from the rations. Some of my earliest memories are of sitting at the kitchen table on Sunday afternoons,