In which peanut brittle, the Vietnam War, and my wife's boyfriend factor

Our new kitchen is fantastic but since it’s at the back of the house I can’t see who’s coming up the driveway.  A few days after I returned from Qatar I was puttering around the stove and heard a vehicle pull up to the house.  Was it was the police (my moustache really makes me look suspicious)?  Zombie Ed McMahon with a really big check?

Ed McMahon was unavailable so they sent Stephen Hawking instead.

“It’s my boyfriend!”, Louise said excitedly.

Now, if that was true it wouldn’t be all downside.  He’d have to listen to all her complaints about me, for one (I alone get that honor now), and he’d spend money on her, maybe saving me a little out of pocket expense.

We’ve been through this drill before, however, so I know that “boyfriend” is her pet name for whichever UPS driver is bringing her “gifts”.  If only they were the ones paying for the gifts…but since the boxes come from J Crew, Banana Republic, and Piperlime I’m pretty sure there’s a little self-love going on.

She quickly returned from her rendezvous with a stack of boxes and began going through them.

“Hey, here’s one for you.  Who’s this Joan…Joan V…Joan View…I can’t pronounce this name.  What is it?”

I thought for a second.  “Oh!  That’s my girlfriend!”

Louise wasn’t expecting that answer.  “Wait, what?  Someone sent you a package from the desert?”

She’d had the fear in the back of her mind that’d I hook up with some young hottie while deployed, which is totally plausible if you think about it.  After all, I’m 45, overweight (though less so thanks to the power of P90X), and my graying hairline is receding.  On top of that, such activities are against regulations and were really outside the realm of what was physically possible, what with my tiny bunk bed and the ants on the floor.

Then there’s that whole “I’m married” thing.

In short, the box was not from the desert.

My room in Qatar. Throw in a little Barry White and the babes would be lining up at my door.

Back in May, at the appointed time I bought gifts for the mother of my children…I sent her flowers and chocolates.  I know, right?!  Romantically original!  (Guys, feel free to steal the idea)  Since there were neither suitable flowers nor chocolates in Qatar, I outsourced it.

For the foliage I went with FTD.  They dropped the ball…they ran out of the plant I ordered so they substituted another, packing it poorly so it arrived broken.  Yay FTD.

Chocolates I take more seriously; my inner chick wouldn’t have it any other way.  In the past I’ve ordered from DeBrand - their truffles are decadent – but for this occasion I went looking for a new chocolatier.

I take this duty seriously – I literally spent hours searching for the right place to buy from.  I look for good chocolates, a good story (yes, I read the “about us” pages), and I search the Internet for positive reviews.  I like to buy American when I can, too, though with chocolates that’s not really hard to do.

I settled on Choclatique and included a comment with my order authorizing them to ship as necessary to get to my wife on the Friday before Mother’s Day (because, as usual, I was ordering later than was prudent).  I received a nice note in reply from Joan Vieweger, one of Choclatique’s founders, assuring me the chocolates would arrive in time.

They did and were quite good (so I’m told).  I became a fan of Choclatique (a fancy website may bring sales, but service + quality breeds loyalty) and started following Joan’s Choclatique blog.  Sensing one of my weaknesses Joan wrote about peanut brittle.  Now, for my money you can’t beat See’s peanut brittle…and I’ve tried.  I went through a “I can make great peanut brittle at home” phase, during which I cooked up many batches of peanut brittle, plowing through pounds of sugar and gumming up the stovetop horribly.  I never was able to duplicate See’s great brittle…the closest I came was with a batch of microwave peanut brittle, of all things.

Joan spins a good tale and sitting there in the desert I began to crave peanut brittle.  Several e-mails passed between Joan and I and after extensive shipping research by her (heat and poor handling would be bad for the precious cargo) I decided it would be better to wait until after I got home to order some.

I never got a chance to place that order, for in the package from my “girlfriend” was two boxes: one of peanut brittle and one of chocolate covered peanut brittle.

And it was good.  Really good.  Lots of peanuts…I hate skimpy peanut brittle.

And it came with a nice note too! (Click to enlarge, as with every other picture on the site)

Ok, I suck.  I don’t know any highfalutin food words and I can’t spit out flowery phraseology to do a proper review, like “it evokes remembrances of my childhood kitchen, Mom at the stove lovingly crafting another delight for her family while I sat nearby, playing under the table and dreaming.”

Not that my mother made peanut brittle mind you, but that’s not the point.  The first thing I came up with was a meger offering of monosyllabicity.

We loved the brittle and it was gone in fairly short order.  It wasn’t too hard (I broke a tooth on brittle once) and not gooey.  I’d never had chocolate covered peanut brittle before; it was excellent.  My wife had her hand in that box frequently…and she doesn’t like peanuts, peanut butter, or peanut brittle.

Not my mother.

Thanks Joan and Ed, for your gift, your kind words, and for saving me on Mother’s Day when FTD let me down.  The rest of you, go buy something from them.

And now, the rest of the story.

In response to my “thank you” e-mail I received a note from Ed Engoron, the other founder of Choclatique.  When I was Internet-powered chocolate quest I’d read his bio on their website – “He studied in Paris at the famed Cordon Bleu and Meraux Chocolate Boutique, and has had a passion for chocolate his entire life” - and thought, “ooh, fancy guy.”

Keep reading and you’ll see, as I did, if you had to pick one adjective to describe Ed it probably wouldn’t be “fancy”.

He wrote

Thank you and your brothers in arms for watching over our security while making such a large family sacrifice.  I can’t tell you how much we appreciate it.  I have become a “twitter-bug” (if you don’t know what that means ask your kids) and every evening before we shut things down for the day we send a thought and prayer to all those overseas in harm’s way.  I spent 2-1/2 years in Vietnam (another time and another place).  I was the line producer for ABC News from late 1964 through 1967.  So, I do have an understanding of all you may have experienced.

Whoa…2 1/2 years in Vietnam?  Heck, Qatar’s a 5-star resort compared to Vietnam…or Iraq…or Afghanistan.  I’m quite sure I don’t have an understanding of all he experienced.  I wrote back and asked Ed about his stories.

My time in Vietnam was like a totally different century (and of course it was).  The military was mostly made up of conscripts (not a volunteer-based military) none of who wanted to be in Vietnam . 

There were only about 40 members of the press with notable names like Liz Trotter, Peter Jennings, Tom Brokaw and even occasionally Walter Cronkite.  There were no computers, no video tape, no satellites and no imbedded, well-taken care of, pampered reporters.  Most of the anchors were based in Saigon and most of us—line reporters, producers, camera, men and sound men—were actively hitching rides with platoons to get to where the action was every day.  We carried heavy 35mm film cameras and were required to be at the Saigon airport by 1pm to make sure our undeveloped film was back on a plane to the US . 

Many of the troops became drug addicted by the time they left their 1 year tour.  Since our job was to go and capture action shots we were right in the thick of many fire fights.  We violated all of the company rules and were always heavily armed and on many occasions actually were fighting along with our troops.  I was in Saigon from the earliest days after the Tonkin Golf incident.  I shot footage from the ground, the air (bombing raids over Hanoi ) the sea (air craft carriers, destroyers and submarines)

The Vietnam incident was a battle that could have been won in a matter of weeks, but with all the government interference from Washington it dragged out for years.  It was a war that we should never have inherited from the French and was described by the trial judge during the Westmoreland slander/liable litigation in the 1980’s, “It was a lousy little war lead by a lousy little general.” 

I walk away a lot wiser than when I first came over.  My life was saved on more than one occasion by members of our great military.  Many of my Vietnam exploits and adventures were made into a documentary, Letters from Vietnam, several years ago using most of the footage I shot while in theater. 

I went on to cover further conflicts in Egypt , Jordan , Israel and Cypress .  I spent 5 days under a mattress in the Nicosia Hilton with another reporter from NBC.  After being shot at on a daily basis for nearly 4 years I left ABC and went on to open restaurants, food companies and Choclatique.  So as you can probably tell I am no longer the adventuresome, Young Turk I used to.

Well crap…why are they sending me stuff?  Maybe I should whip up a batch of microwave peanut brittle and send it his way.  Or a nice bottle of aged single malt whisky.  I did disagree with him about one thing…I think being an entrepreneur is pretty adventuresome. 

As a way of saying I was impressed by his adventures I asked when his book was coming out.

The book… well the book is out to 20 publishers as we speak.  The proposal went out last week from my literary agent in New York .  The only difference is it is all about chocolate—Chocolate Out of the Box is the title.  If published it will be the first adventure/travel cookbook chronicling my travels to over 130 countries in search of “perfect chocolate.”  It includes 150 fool-proof recipes using Choclatique Ganache Sauces (out next year).  I love to travel and I love to eat.  I can tell you that my crazy, stupid and risky exploits canoeing down the Amazon or trudging the cocoa forests in Columbia or hiking across the cacao plantations is Malaysia raised the hairs on my back years after when I was writing the chapters for the book.  It was a great experience to share these adventures with people who never knew any of the things I had done in search of great food and the ingredients to make it—all for the sake of food and chocolate.

And I thought I liked chocolate.  He’s like the Indiana Jones of chocolate.  Me, I take the kids to Hershey PA on the way home from camping.

Hey, give me a little credit…it is in a different state after all.

Thanks Ed, for permission to quote your e-mails here.  I didn’t think I’d do such wholesale lifting but what could I cut out?  It was all fascinating,  Plus it’s way more interesting than anything I’ve had to say.  I look forward to the book coming out.

To answer the cynics out there, no, Joan did not know I’m the mastermind behind this darling of the Internet called “Hyperdad” (a magnet to dozens of people a day) when she sent me the peanut brittle.  She was just doing a nice thing for a serviceman she’s never met.

That’s pretty darn cool, wouldn’t you agree?