A Crisis Of Epic Proportions

I had a crisis of epic proportions the other day. My stomach dropped, my breathing intensified, and I started having heart palpitations. An anxiety attack was on the horizon.

You see, I ran out of chocolate chips.

I know; I couldn’t believe it either.

I have posted on Facebook several times about how I “get nervous” when I run out of chocolate chips, but most people think I’m just trying to be funny.

Sadly, I’m not.

I truly have a physical reaction to the news that I have zero bags of those little semi-sweet teardrops in my freezer*.

Granted, I hardly use them anymore: I don’t make chocolate chip banana bread or any of our other favorite baked goodies like I used to because of the low-fat diet I am attempting to maintain. Chocolate chip pancakes–the only variety of pancake I enjoy, thanks to my mom and her long-standing family tradition to put chocolate in as many foods as is humanly possible–are a rarity these days, too.

Unless I forget to pull something out of the freezer for dinner, which is what happened a couple of days ago. Oops.

“No problem,” I thought, “I’ll just make pancakes.” After making that decision, I went back to work.

When it was time to make dinner, I sauntered into the kitchen (a short commute from my couch-office) and started pulling out the pancake supplies. Bowl, check. Pancake mix, check. Frying pan, check. Blueberries for Jim’s pancakes**, check. Chocolate chips…

Um.

What???

And then, cursing.

&$#(^$#$&^%(@$!-+%^#

I mean, a lot of cursing.

(#$^%!)_+#$&%!”#$#!%

How could this happen???? This hardly ever happens.

I tore apart both the freezer in the kitchen and the small chest freezer we have in the basement because usually when I think I’m out of chocolate chips I can usually find a half bag shoved in the corner of one of the freezers, and then we all have a good laugh about the close call as the family DEFCON Level goes from 1 back down to 5.

It was not to be this time, however.

Naturally I took to Facebook.

Luckily, while my friends were taunting me with their comments like “This is why I buy 50# (not a typo) of dark chocolate chunks from my local Amish bulk foods supplier” (AHEM, REBECCA), I came up with a Plan B.

I had to break into my stash.

Reaching up into the top cabinet, I grabbed a plastic grocery store bag to see what kind of candy was in there. I haven’t touched this bag in months, again because of my new-ish low-fat ways.

It turns out I had two choices. The first was Cherry Cordial Hershey Kisses, which wouldn’t work because they had a soft cherry cream center. The second was Cherry Cordial M&M’s, and I said out loud, “Ding, ding, ding! We have a winner!” (Oh yes, I did.)

It is at this point where I am both amused and embarrassed to report that I bought these bags of candy in a post-Christmas clearance sale back in January. AND THANK GOODNESS I DID.

After figuring out Plan B I started taking absolutely mediocre pictures of my process because as much as I believe I am not the type of person who would be a successful food blogger, I just wrote a food post ten days ago and, well, this may be turning into a habit.

Anyhoo, the first step I took in making my M&Ms-substituting-for-chocolate-chips pancakes was to pull out my mini food processor. Those M&Ms were on the large side and I had to take them down.

After a couple minutes of pulsing, it became clear to me that I was going to grind everything into a fine powder if I kept going long enough to chop up every single M, so I decided to stop there.

Actually, I guess since I’m a burgeoning food blogger I should actually tell you that I only chopped up half of them to provide some variety in the texture. Yeah, that. Forget that first thing I said.

I mixed up the pancake mix (NOT from scratch, FYI), and then it was time to fry ’em up! Easy peasy.

Naturally because I’m a professional (er, professional something), they turned out beautifully. I mean, just look at these.

Wait, you want to see the M&M side? Here.

Uh-oh, that kind of looks like a hot mess. You should definitely look at the other side again.

I don’t know; I think this food blogger thing might be working out for me after all. I could do it, right? I’d certainly have my own niche.

By the way, in case you wondered, I went to the store and made sure that I won’t have to deal with another crisis of epic proportions for a long, long time.

Or at least a couple of weeks.

*And don’t start debating me on whether it’s good to store chocolate chips in the freezer. That debate has already occurred (on Facebook, of course). I have been storing chocolate chips in the freezer since I was born. Practically.

**Jim hates chocolate chip pancakes. I feel like I hardly know him on pancake night.