Now it's Christmas time.

It never feels like Christmas until I start making chocolates. And I started yesterday in a big way. I had four friends over for a chocolate-making hands-on tutorial and production-fest. We made:

• Semisweet fruit and nut bark
  
• Milk chocolate walnut bark with golden raisins
  
• Mocha truffles enrobed in milk chocolate
  
• Lavender caramels enrobed in semisweet chocolate
  
• Cointreau truffles (that's still in my refrigerator waiting to be enrobed)

I think we probably made about 25 pounds of chocolates in total, and we hummed Christmas carols for part of the time, until we realized that Jason, one of our kitchen-mates, has to listen to treacly carols all day at his job at Costco. Still, the Christmas season began for me. The day began at 7:30, when I got up to start the coffee beans steeping in hot cream for the mocha truffles. Then I did the same with another batch of hot cream, but added lavender for the caramels. Then I poured all the ingredients for the two barks into staging bowls, so I wouldn't forget to add anything (it's happened before). My four friends showed up at 11, and we began a full day of work. We used every mixing bowl in the house, and every dish towel. There was melted chocolate everywhere. My co-chocolatiers had never made barks before, and when they plunged their hands into melted chocolate to mix in the nuts and fruit, the "I have both my hands wrist-deep in chocolate!" look on their faces was priceless. We broke around 2 for some pizza, and the last two die-hards went home around 6. I finished cleaning up at 8:30.

I've decided it's a lot more fun to make chocolates with friends than it is to make them by myself, which is how I've done it in years past. Bob helps me with barks, but usually I do all the other candies myself. It's much more efficient to have more hands in the kitchen -- we got two days' worth of production done in one. The only downside is that my friends made off with most of my inventory, so I need to do a couple more batches of things, caramels in particular. But they paid for the cost of ingredients, it's just out the time. That's not a big deal -- time seems to just slide by when I'm making candy; it's never a chore.

In other news, I have a raging cold. I was just achy and a little sore-throaty yesterday. But last night it was full-on congestion, which meant very little sleep, and today I feel like a cable car hit me. I slept in until 10 this morning, which meant no church and no visit with my elderly friend Betty. She doesn't need a cold from me, anyway. Neither will there will be any chocolate making. It's a lie-around-and-drink-tea kind of day.