Chocolate Virgin Mary and Other Surprises

The Virgin Mary sure gets around! She's been seen on walls and in trees. In 2004, she was on a grilled cheese sandwich, which sold in November of that year for $28,000. I looked at the picture of the sandwich, though, and it looked more like Mae West with curly hair to me, but who am I to say? I'm not Catholic.

Now, she's in a two-inch tall blob of chocolate drippings. The AP reported yesterday that workers at a gourmet chocolate factory discovered her.

Kitchen worker Cruz Jacinto was the first to spot the lump of melted chocolate when she began her shift Monday cleaning up drippings that had accumulated under a large vat of dark chocolate.

Chocolate drippings usually harden in thin, flat strips on wax paper, but Jacinto said she froze when she noticed the unusual shape of this cast-off: It looked just like the Virgin Mary on the prayer card she always carries in her right pocket.

The chocolate, on display for most of the week in the front of the company gift shop, now rests in a plastic case in a back room and is brought out only for curious visitors.

I'm not sure what to make of this. You can see almost anything if you try hard enough, or if you stare, unfocused, long enough.

One time I grew a carrot in my garden that looked like an anatomically correct man from the waist down. Except for the feet. He didn't have any feet. His legs tapered down to carrot-like points. But it was definitely a man, and I brought him to work and showed him around.

I don't have pictures, though. That was before I got my good camera. And besides, I wouldn't post the pictures if I had them. This is a family-friendly blog, mostly.

People make a big deal about foods that look like things, especially Jesus or the Virgin Mary, when it's easy for food to look like people who dressed in loose clothing with shawls over their heads. If people found chocolate drippings shaped like Madonna from her cone-bra and hotpants days, or shaped like Donald Duck in his sailor suit, now that would be something.