Harvey Flea, our adventurer extraoridinaire
This is the online home of Harvey Flea, the world’s first travel writer who is also a mosquito. With humor, fun, and buckets of adventure, Harvey trots the globe. Read Harvey’s bio here.
Harvey also welcomes essays from his friends. These include Grumpy Retired Travel Writer Lady, Yuri the gloomy Moldovan, and Archibald Chops. For more information on the cast, see Adventure Strike Team.
The steamy earthy brown oozes down, bearing down on me as I stare, transfixed, unable to move except for the shiver of anticipation that runs down my spine. It is a formidable presence. 700 times bigger than I am, this mound, covered in lava, is a force of nature. There is only one way to stop it.
With my mouth.
Profiteroles!
I am, of course, talking about the profiterole. Oh, how I love that word. Let me interrupt my written account so I can take a bite while the chocolate sauce - the only kind of lava worth eating - is still warm.
Are you jealous? You should be. Very. Very. Very jealous.
But don’t hate me. My culinary pursuits are therapy. You see, I have been hard at work writing my mystery memoirs, and let’s just say I am a wee bit behind schedule. Just a smidgen. Or four or five smidgens. A few months. But you just can’t hurry genius. That’s what I keep telling my editor. Not directly, of course. I haven’t picked up my phone in months. But I send her e-mails when I know she is offline and can’t speak to me directly.
Profieteroles!!!
She’s taken to sending thugs (she calls them assistants) to my home. This creates stress. Stress makes me eat. And when I stress eat, there is only one thing I crave.
Prftrlethg.
How rude of me. I had my mouth full. Profiteroles is what I meant to say before pure chocolate heaven enraptured my tongue.
Of course, the only place to go for profiteroles is France. There are two reasons for this.
Reason # 1: It’s France. No explanation needed.
Reason # 2: My editor is allergic to French people. This is one of her many flaws. But I thank the good Lord for this idiosyncrasy, because when I want to avoid her, I run screaming to France and fall into the warm embrace of the nearest profiterole.
So I am in Paris, in an undisclosed location to prevent my editor from sending her thug/assistants after me. Of course, if she does, I know exactly where I can hide.
Yes, indeed. I mix in very well with the chocolate sauce. You can barely see me.
Of course, she might not send anyone. She might be under the impression that I am dead. Perhaps because that’s what my answering machine message claims. But it’s not entirely untrue, now is it? After all, I am in profiterole heaven. Ergo, I must be dead.
Profiteroles!!! Heaven!
Back to the profiteroles. You don’t have to cover profiteroles in chocolate sauce. A pastry shop on the Rue du Bac in Paris tops them with delicate cream. Do I like them that way? Of course. The classic profiterole has vanilla ice cream or cream piled up inside, but the ones I am communing with now have ginger ice cream. Do I like them that way?
Do you even need to ask?
It is an arduous task, being that I am of such small stature (but huge genius, might I remind my editor?) to do proper justice to a profiterole. But duty calls, so I must return to my fire-and-ice choux. I leave you, however, with a video explaining how to make your own profiteroles if you’ve let your passport run out and are unable to make it over to France to join me in my quest.
If you do join me, don’t touch my profiterole. I might not let you live.
Just kidding.
Sort of.