November 4, 2005
solitary chocolate tasting
At around 9 PM, I passed out on my bed while reading a chapter in You Eat What You Are about Korean food. 30 minutes later, an inkling of brain activity stirred (as drool seeped out of my mouth ...yes, folks, I have a propensity towards drooling!) and my wobbly legs directed me towards...
KITCHEN. BASKET. WITH APPLES. EAT!
Was I hungry? God no! After the apple, I ate 25 grams of a Ritter Sport bar I bought today.
OKAY, WHAT IS GOING ON? Make it stop make it stop make it stop [scarfs down chocolate] okay this isn't working my life is spiraling into a deep dark hole of sugar and cocoa butter and soy lecithin ("a natural emulsifier"!).
- I bought chocolate
I'll admit, buying all this chocolate (I usually just buy one bar at a time) is not something I'd file under "achievements displaying large amounts of intelligence" (not that I can think of anything that would fit into that category). I had just gone to the market in Union Square, where I ate a sweet potato pecan muffin for lunch and procured Jonagold apples and a bunch of leeks, when I decided to veer towards the Garden of Eden, a gourmet supermarket with perhaps the most varied chocolate selection I've ever seen.
While some people plan to do useful things, I tend to go into the opposite direction. "How un-useful can I be? How much of a burden can I place on this fragile Earth? What havoc can I wreak?" So. I'd like to try as many brands of chocolate as I can (aka, "Operation: Pants Won't Fit Anymore") because...wait, I don't need a reason!
Some people like coffee. Some people like booze. Some people like weed. I like chocolate, and I daresay I'm not addicted to it. I certainly don't need it to function, I just...you know, like to eat it. Surely it's less costly than some kinds of coffee, and booze, and weed, but with a higher enjoyment factor (because the other things would make me want to retch). I don't eat chocolate every day, but when I do it's usually around 100 grams.
Yes, I'm aware of the caloric implications of such an amount. If I had enough chocolate loving friends whom I could get together with on a regular basis and who wouldn't mind contributing to my cause (as in, giving me hard, cold cash), I'd love to hold chocolate tastings. $5 will get you a high quality chocolate bar, or a couple of medium quality ones. Then we can all sit around and examine the chocolate bars, akin to a wine tasting, and...get soooo fat!
Wait. Nix the last bit. A lack of people to help distribute the calories (I have friends who can't eat 100 grams of chocolate in a day; what's that about? Such discipline!) hasn't changed my idea very much, hence I shall plod on and continue my solitary hedonistic quest.
Um. Back to chocolate! I tried all three of them (what, you think I have willpower?); here's my rundown:
- Guittard, 38% milk chocolate: Disappointing for some reason. It just had this taste that didn't seem right. Nothing looks wrong with the ingredients (it has vanilla beans, rather than vanillin) and the texture was alright. Maybe a 10 gram piece wasn't enough to judge, but I don't want to buy a whole bar of it.
- Ritter Sport, Praline (or nougat) filling: Good stuff, and not very expensive. Then again, I've never had bad hazelnut praline; that would be so sad. I ate 50 grams.
- Caffarel, hazelnut milk chocolate (at least 30%): Holy crap, this was so good. At first it was too melty (same for the Ritter Sport) so I put it in the fridge. The solid-er chocolate just tasted...so good. It's not overly sweet but not under either (yeah, I've had under-sweetened milk chocolate and you know what it tastes like? Almost nothing. It's in some outer dimension where it's not sweet milk chocolate or bitter dark, but hovering uncomfortably in between the two). Smooth. Sweet enough to make me happy. And yes, the hazelnut...it has that nice after-though taste, kind of like when after you swallow something (as opposed to during chewing) you get hit with a strong flavor. Like *foof*. I ate 50 grams of this.
- Caffarel milk chocolate
My tastebuds declared Caffarel as the champion in this "Battle of the Chocolates" (which I just realized pitted Italian against German against American chocolate, whoa). Where to from here? MORE CAFFAREL! Obviously.
When I told my mum that I bought all this chocolate, she reminded me that the Chocolate Show is next week. Yeah...I knew that. So? The Chocolate Show is destined to put me in a chocolate coma, which is a little unsettling, but certainly you've gorged on a favorite food only to conclude that "This floaty feeling in my skull and numbing pain in my stomach is totally worth it."
If you're wondering, I did eat something that nutritionists wouldn't completely shun. I call it...
- dinner!
"All this stuff in my kitchen which I chopped up and sauteed before not-so-artfully slopping onto a plate." The name could use some editing, but that's basically it. And I didn't actually put everything in my kitchen in this dish, as I forgot about the smoked fish in my fridge. This mixture contains potato, onions, shallots, leeks, and egg (with various seasonings). Your mouth is watering, I can FEEL IT...no wait, that's just confused silence.
What will tomorrow's mealtimes bring? I'm afraid to find out.
Posted by roboppy at 11:05 PM
Comments (8)
Actually, that plate of food does look quite nice.
Oh, btw, according to neurologists, eating chocolate stimulates the same pleasure centers in the brain that are stimulated by sex.. ;)
Posted by: Wei at November 5, 2005 11:22 PM [#]
We sold the Latte & Menta candies made by Caffarel at the Lindt chocolate store I recently quite working at. They were sooo yummy--kind of like minty Werther's candies. Mmm! :)
And a gift shop recently opened up in the mall where I work that sells Ritter Sport bars. I'm thinking of trying the marzipan one. Yum, marzipan!
OMG. A Chocolate Show? You must go! And take photos! And grab the samples! =)
Posted by: AugustusGloop at November 6, 2005 10:41 PM [#]
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