Let's face it, a nice creamy chocolate cake does a lot for a lot of people; it does for me.
I like quinoa. I like gingerbread. I feel they should be kept separate. I'm not in favor of this thing of making kind of raw, vegan chocolate cake and saying it's as good as chocolate cake. I mean, just eat cake and be done with it. And then have a separate meal of quinoa.
It's fine to eat dessert when I want to eat dessert because that will give me the peace of mind I need. I'll know that if I ate chocolate cake, maybe I won't the next day.
It does annoy me when I walk into a room and there are six men over the age of 40 with, let's just say, a major gut problem, and they're saying 'hang on there Dervla, don't eat your chocolate cake at dessert.'
On September twentieth every year, I got to choose my menu - meatloaf, corn niblets, and rice were followed by candles on chocolate cake with vanilla icing and a scoop of Brock-Hall ice cream.
My favorite splurge is homemade chocolate cake and vanilla ice cream or a Sausage McMuffin with egg or scalloped potatoes or turkey yanked right off the carcass and dipped in gravy or See's chocolate.
I am not strict vegan, because I'm a hedonist pig. If I see a big chocolate cake that is made with eggs, I'll have it.
People have often asked me whether what I know about love has spoiled it for me. And I just simply say, 'Hardly.' You can know every single ingredient in a piece of chocolate cake, and then when you sit down and eat that cake, you can still feel that joy.
This is part of what makes me, ahem, an excellent houseguest: I'm game. I'm flexible. I'll make you feel okay about eating an entire chocolate cake in one sitting because I'm right there by your side with my own fork.
It's easy to fall into a funk and not want to exercise, or to really want that second piece of chocolate cake. I have to say, I fight against those feelings all year. But I try not to let myself sit in a rut like that.
