Incredible.  Apparently, the cacao scarcity prevalent in post-World War II Europe struck again, in this modern new century.   Oh yes it did, Chicken Little, it did. Pandemonium breaks, as feathered and unfeathered chocoholics race to spread the warning.

You see, I attended an affair that is most memorable for its careful conservation of a certain Italian chocolate hazelnut confection.  The event was intended to be an amicable morning gathering over food, also known as breakfast with friends.

I had originally suggested a local diner, frequented by the trendy youth from town and the neighboring rural counties.  Yes, you can be hip and live on a farm – a farm with satellite television.  Anyway, it seemed like a good way to ease into a lazy Sunday morning.  I was quickly vetoed and shamed for suggesting we pay someone to prepare and serve our food.  Especially since true cool kids source breakfast from their composted vegetable gardens, with a side of eggs from paleo diet-raised, gluten-free pet hens. Not to mention, diner caffeine would never compare to the arabica beans obtained from a Somali warlord on a backpacking trip through Kenya, and ground in an antique French grinder unearthed in a small Provençal village market, and carefully smuggled in through customs.

So I caved and agreed to the slightly awkward, but all-American, potluck.  I got assigned bread.  Bread, plain and simple.  Another person got coffee.  Another jam.   And there was a tossup for the milk.  I’m not sure why coffee person couldn’t also be the milkmaid, but I was violently afraid of speaking up.  I also wasn’t going to gripe about the fact that the bakeries were all closed on Sundays.  No, siree.  I was going to be a joiner, and source an average, likely soft baguette, and love every minute of it.

All appeared easy enough.  I just strolled a few blocks with my limp baguette in hand; once inside the kitchen, I leaned against a counter desperate for a gulp of this gold standard of coffees.   Suddenly, the conversation came to a halt.  A jar of Nutella was pulled from the back of a cabinet.  All eyes feasted on it greedily.  This is why breakfast is the most important meal of the day.  Chocolate.  Spread.

And then just like that, high-pitched concern erupted about the dangers of opening a jar – and then having it sit unsealed, accessible, taunting you from the darkness of the bottom left cabinet.

For in the twenty-first century, sticky chocolate was and remains a delicacy.   And an open jar in a house where a woman resides can be a solitary, dangerous game.  You know the film with reckless spoon-in-jar dining by a pajama-clad fair lass and her faithful companion, the mud mask.

“I have an open jar at home,” interjected neighbor Foxy Loxy who had been invited just that morning.  This was Foxy’s opportunity to highlight her very own contribution to this communal repast.  I wondered, was it really necessary when we had a perfectly delicious jar right in front of us?

Yes, children, it apparently was.  Foxy went on her way, and seventeen solid minutes later, she returned.  Consciences were assuaged as rationing triumphed, and potluck egalitarian principles were upheld.

That fateful day changed me forever.  I became compulsively wasteful with my multiple jars of chocolate confectionery.  Jams and marmalades too.

And I have been recently diagnosed with Post Potluck Stress Disorder.  But I am seeking treatment.