A Difficult Easter

I know that I have said it before, but I am having a really hard time of things at the moment. Just surviving day to day is difficult and there are often days when I wish that I hadn't woken up. I'm even finding it difficult to make comments on my favourite blogs although I do read them and know that I want to say something. So I am making an effort today and I am going to write this post and possibly at least one more.

First of all I would like to say thank you to alhi at Random Musings of a Wannabe for her Easter email, and to apologise for not writing back to her. She also sent me a comment yesterday hoping that I was okay and that I would be back blogging again soon. Anyway, here I am.

Someone else who has remarked to me about my lack of posting to the blog is There and Back. We correspond on a daily basis and she has been having a difficult time too the result of which was that she found herself in hospital again and she has said as much on her blog so I don't feel that I am betraying any confidences here by mentioning it.

There and Back decided that she was going to do what she could to try to cheer me up a little over Easter and very kindly sent me an Easter egg. There are thousands of eggs to choose from and I have to say that the one that I received was absolutely amazing. The egg itself was made of the thickest chocolate that I think that I have ever seen on such an item, and it was the most delicious too. One half of the egg was milk chocolate, the other half was a mixture of milk and white chocolate. What made it so delicious was that while the milk chocolate was made from 40% cocoa and the purists will say that you need at least 70% cocoa to make a good chocolate (and I do indeed like such chocolate) the amount of sugar that it contained was much less than is normal in milk or white chocolate, so you had all the flavour of the chocolate but not the sweetness that is usually associated with it. But what made the egg really special was the additional contents packaged with it. No it didn't have the usual mixture of small chocolates or mini eggs; its contents were like none that I have ever seen before so I thought that you might like to see them.

The first bag of goodies contained three white chocolate bunnies in baskets. Then (clockwise) a smiley-faced egg shape which was described as being 'chocolate brownie' and that is what it was like eating; the egg shape with the darker chocolate pattern was described as strawberry mousse which was made from real strawberries which was evidenced by it not only tasting of real strawberries and not some synthetic flavour, but also had strawberry pips in it; and finally the lighter-coloured smiley-faced egg shape was a smooth praline that melted in the mouth.

The second bag of goodies was no less delicious. Starting at top left and clockwise again, the first smiley face was an orange praline. Like the strawberry mousse it was obvious that real fruit was used to flavour this and the mixture of chocolate and orange is always a winner. The egg shape with the 'fried egg' was vanilla mousse and again was full of flavour. If I am honest anything that is vanilla is going to be a winner as far as I am concerned; for me it will always be a vanilla milk shake or a vanilla-flavoured coffee that will get my vote. The lighter-coloured smiley face was described as praline with crunchy biscuit and that was exactly what you got; lots of lovely little crunchy bits in a lovely smooth praline. And to finish off the selection there were three little chocolate chicks.

What was so amazing about all of these lovely goodies was that each of them was a joy to eat and left you wanting more; and they weren't small either because amazed at the size of them I actually got a tape measure out to see how big they were. Each was about 5cm in height and the egg shapes were about 1.5cm in depth. There was no way that you were going to pop these in your mouth in one go.

And even though I had a torrid Easter weekend, I couldn't help but raise a smile when I looked at the smiley-faced egg shapes. Thank you There and Back, that was an Easter egg that I am never going to forget.