A sweet treat to read by

There are days when all you want to do is sit down and curl up with a good book and read. For me, there aren't enough of those days, so when I get one I want to enjoy every minute of it. And while a good book will take my mind away from the here and now and export me to a world of action-adventure, love and dreams, crime and passion, it leaves my body behind.

So while I'm curled up in a chair fantasizing about being an undercover operative dressed in silk and fishnet stockings with a two-shot Lady Derringer strapped to my garter, my palate has a taste for something sweet and my stomach does a slow grumble.

A nice glass of wine or a good beer will add to the relaxation of that terrific novel that has sucked me in, but it neither of those will do anything for that rumbling roller coaster in my stomach. A sandwich or soup or even pizza won't do because then you have to take your eyes off the book in order to to spill the food down the front of you or onto the pristine pages of your novel. You can't have chips because your fingers get that cheezy, salty, greasy residue on them and then you leave fingerprints on the wonderful pages of that suspense story.

What do you do then?

The answer is something sweet and preferably chocolatey. You could go out a buy a box of your favorite chocolates like Lindt or Godiva, or you can make your own.

The following is a very simple recipe to make a CHOCOLATE CLUSTER. Clusters are in my mind one of the best chocolates because depending on what you add for the CRUNCH ingredient you can make them sweet or sweet-n-salty. These are also simple and fun to do with the kids.

How to make CHOCOLATE CLUSTERS:

Ingredients:

1 pound of chocolate (This could be chocolate chips or bars or confectionary chocolate)

CRUNCH Center (pretzels, toasted coconut, chopped nuts, cranberries, crushed oreos...)

Directions:

Place chocolate in a bowl
Microwave chocolate in 30 second intervals until melted and stir until smooth
Add in CRUNCH ingredient and stir until mixed
Drop spoonfuls of mixture into lined mini-muffin tins or small candy molds
Refrigerate until firm

After your clusters are done, store them in a plastic baggie in the fridge. Now, whenever you get a chance to open that book that has been on the top of your To Be Read pile for a month, you have that something sweet to keep your noisy stomach at bay and your mind inside the scene where the heroine is fleeing the sharp-shooter for her life.

Grab that glass of wine, those chocolate clusters, your book and Enjoy!!!