Damn You, Martha!!

OK, I admit it. I get Martha Stewart's magazine, which is titled 'Living'. Kind of a presumptuous title but oddly off-putting all at the same time, isn't it? I mean, how can anyone argue with 'Living'? It implies simplicity - basic and to the point. It's apparently worked marketing magic on myself, because I actually subscribe to the magazine even though I will probably, realistically, never actually have the time to make my own cheese.
For the Easter edition, Martha's food-porn centerfolds included chocolate -- lovely close-ups of chocolate being chopped, stirred into a melting pot, tempered (the title of the photo said "cooling chocolate" but I KNEW, from the movie 'Chocolate', that it's called "tempering" - one up on ya, Martha!) Enter visions of Johnny Depp as the swarthy river-rat from said movie. Johnny Depp and fine chocolate. Need I say more?
The last photo in the series showed a rack of eggs, each sitting up straight in it's carton-hole, being piped with chocolate...WAIT! YOU CAN MAKE YOUR OWN CHOCOLATE EASTER EGGS! WITH REAL EGGS! Exit the photos, enter the text...
No one but Martha has the power to allure with such perceived simplicity; "perceived" being the operative term here.
I had a dozen good reasons why making my own chocolate eggs was a fab idea. Of course, one piece of REALLY GOOD chocolate is worth more than 10 pounds of the crappy stuff. The fact that I would hand-make these little treasures; that would make them extra-special to my loved ones. And it just looked really fun. (Enter images from 'Chocolate' again; I am the female lead adeptly whisking sheets of molten bliss across the table, to a calypso rhythm..)
I could go into great detail here, but suffice it to say that, had someone photographed MY process of making blown-out, sanitized, dyed (organically of course) chicken eggs refilled with fine chocolate and love, it would have been the food-porn equivalent of a slasher flick.
My back hurt that evening. The kitchen, including the wall, was splattered in $10/lb Dutch chocolate. Chocolate crept up my arms, seeping into my elbow creases. There was chocolate on the counter, the breadboard, the stove, and the floor. There was no Johnny Depp to lick it off of my elbow. There was a good deal of chocolate in the sink. There was chocolate on the cat. There was probably cat hair in the chocolate. There was actually, perilously, only a small amount of chocolate in the painstakingly-prepared chicken eggs. Martha's admonition that "each brand of chocolate requires differing tempering procedures and temperatures" certainly proved true. Unlike the shimmery stuff showing through the holes on her eggs, mine looked milky and lumpy.
Did I get a few good eggs out of the endeavor? Yes. Was it worth the $42.87 and six hours of time, not counting cleanup? Really, No.
Have I learned a lesson from this? Will I ever allow myself to be seduced into anything like growing, preparing and gifting my own Japanese-style poached pickled Daikon radishes with Hoisin raisin extract? Unfortunately, the jury's still out on that one.
Damn you, Martha.