Travel for Business: Blueberry Nib

Ah, Colorado, you beautiful creature, you. 

One of the luxuries of having a job that requires some travel is the ability to take full advantage of that travel for personal pleasure. Most of my travel includes visits to exotic destinations like Amarillo, Mobile AL, Tulsa, OK, or the ever-confusing Columbus, Indiana (every place has its charms, of course…), but every once in a while I get to go somewhere a little more compelling. A Memphis, New Orleans, Austin… or Denver.

When it happens, I usually try and maneuver the trip so that I’m there on a Monday or a Friday, and arrange to stay for the weekend. Cummins picks up the tab for the airfare, and I just have to arrange for lodging, transportation, and entertainment. Not a bad deal at all. In this case, my opportunity came a few weeks ago disguised as a Project Management class in Denver.

So, I left behind the 65-degree late-January weather of the DFW metroplex, and walked off the plane into a climate fully 40 degrees colder than what I’d left. Driving to the hotel, there were mounds of ice in the parking lots, where the snow had been ploughed to the side weeks ago and left to partially melt into rock-like sculptural formations. 

The project management class was informative if unremarkable, and I got to meet some key colleagues, tour the Denver branch locations, and gather helpful information for a number of projects. Beyond that, there were a couple of late nights of “networking” (aka, drinking and playing darts and pool), which made the days in class seem far, far longer than they actually were. 

On Friday, I put my coworkers on planes back to their various destinations, rented another car, and headed to Boulder where my dear friend Ben and his wife and kids have a house right in the shadow of the breathtaking Flatiron Mountains.

Boulder is one of my favorite places in the world – it is beautiful, big-hearted, and profoundly active, with an adorable earthy, hipster streak. The people here care about the integrity of their bike shops and sustainable sourcing of their food. The farmer’s market is a major attraction, and there’s a minor festival whenever notable new crops come in. There are bike and walking trails everywhere, buskers on the streets, and in the summer the local kids splash in bone-chillingly cold streams of pure mountain runoff. The Pearl Street Market is a heart-warming celebration of locally-minded shopping and craftsmanship, with shops specializing in everything from gorgeous old-school wooden puzzles, to tea and teapots, to beautiful hand-crafted hats, to art glass, to kites, to chocolate. 

Boulder is also a great chocolate town; one of the few places where kitchen supply stores and bookshops alike have entire end caps dedicated to gorgeous, delightful locally crafted chocolate bars.

This particular weekend was of the sweet, quiet, domestic variety, making up for the carousing of the week with plenty of wholesome company, good food, and early bedtimes. I went ghost hunting and made paper crowns with the 4-and-a-half year-old and cooed at the baby while he chewed on my knuckles. With the grown-ups, I talked a little work, some politics, and about parenthood, poetry, minimalism, family, bravery, and goodness knows what all else. We got the kiddo new boots and took a hike down a local trail, where I got to walk on water. For real. It was frozen, but whatever. I was psyched.

Ben and I also watched The Lobster which received a well-deserved nomination for Best Screenplay at the Oscars. It’s super weird, but truly amazing. (Like, SUPER weird. Be prepared. Definitely watch it, but be prepared.)

It was a soul-nourishing weekend at high altitudes, and although I didn’t get to spend as much time playing in the mountains themselves or perusing the chocolate selection downtown as I would have liked, I was able to snag a bar from the local bookstore while Ben & co. were picking up supplies for dinner. . 

Enjoy, my friends. Preferably in front of a crackling fireplace with a dog at your feet and a 4 year-old narrating Amelia Bedelia to you.

Item: Blueberry Nib
Percentage: 65% cacao 

Made By: Concertos in Chocolate
Made In: Boulder, CO
Purchased At: Boulder Book Store
Purchase Price: $4.25

Review:   At 65% this one is on the lighter end of what I typically go for. Concertos is a local Boulder chocolatier that keeps it simple and classy with classic, time-tested combinations of flavors combined in fun, interesting ways. Check out their "Dirty Chai" bar if you're feeling feisty. With both dried blueberries and cocao nibs this one is very texturally busy - the cocao nibs lend it a nice, darker edge and anchor the chocolatey flavor, while the blueberries bring an unexpected sweet, chewy pop. This is whimsical chocolate, folks. I still haven't really figured out how much I like weird textures in my chocolate, and my relationship with cocoa nibs is complicated, but this definitely is a fun, charming bar. Would eat again.
 
Recommend


With love, Kat

Two-for-One Thanksgiving: Divine Mango Coconut & Salazon Pumpkin Beer Sea Salt

Here's another out-of-season post that's been needing to be finished for a while. :-) 

There are many things that get more complicated when your family is scattered halfway across the world. It's more expensive and time-consuming to see the people you care about, it's harder to get everyone in one place, and the visits are usually short, few, and far between. However, when it happens, the results are pretty magical. The planning for the 2016 Thanksgiving was pretty crazy - we had to coordinate 11 people and travel from three states across four days at two different locations, and handle the logistics of two entire Thanksgiving menus.

The result was a gorgeous, soul-nourishing two-parter. Episode 1 was in beautiful Woodstock, NY, at my grandmother's cozy cottage. Mom and I flew up from Texas, and we got to meet Will's delightful girlfriend, Nina, and spent the whole day talking, laughing, and singing in the kitchen while cooking up copious amounts of traditional Thanksgiving fare.

The next day we took a long, goofy, lovely walk into town, stopping on the way to thoroughly enjoy an old-fashioned playground, and winding up at the local market to get some hot apple cider and browse the selection of charming local and artisanal foods. 

From there, Mom flew back to Texas, the four sibs and Nina piled into Will's van, and it was on to Philadelphia and Thanksgiving #2! Andrew met us there (having celebrated Thanksgiving proper with his family back in Texas), where Dad and his girlfriend, Nilmini, hosted us all at her gorgeous house, and I got to execute my first full-fledged Thanksgiving menu (GAAAAH!!) with an Indian fusion theme, including a jeweled rice pilaf, curried mashed potatoes, from-scratch garlic naan, habanero and goat cheese stuffed mushrooms, and Indian rice pudding with cherries and bourbon hard sauce for dessert. (Kudos to everyone for helping make it happen!) It was exhausting and beautiful.

I also got to catch up on snuggles with my girl, Ursula, who's starting to get rather grey around the muzzle, but is still every bit as sweet and energetic as the day she came home to us in Austin as a baby puppy all those years ago. The pumpkin pie samosas made a lovely breakfast, and our last day in Philly we took a delightful excursion into town to get drinks at a fancy-pants bar on a boat (Lonely Island would be so proud), and grabbed an amazing veggie Philly cheese steak at the Royal Tavern, before getting on the plane headed home. 

(And yes, in several pictures I am wearing a bright pink coat with pink corduroy pants. Somehow I didn't really make that connection when I was packing for the trip. As Andrew would say, I make decisions.)  

It was a lovely trip, and we enjoyed several bars of chocolate along the way but these were the most notable, which, although thematically a little disparate, made an interesting pairing for our Thanksgiving prep and travel.

Photo Credit: thechocolatewebsite.com

Item: Dark Chocolate with Mango & Coconut 
Percentage: 70% cacao 

Made By: Divine Chocolate
Made In: Cacao grown in Ghana, processed into chocolate in Europe
Purchased At: Whole Foods - Arlington, TX
Purchase Price: $3.59

Review: Divine delivers again! They maintain a particularly high concentration of cocoa butter in their chocolate, which means it melts deliciously, and they consistently get the sweet/dark balance juuuuuuust right. The mango is dominant here, while the coconut lurks in the background, which suits me just fine. There are actually distinct little dried (not freeze-dried!) mango bits, which stick in your teeth and make the process of munching a bit more... erm... lasting than chocolate usually is. However, it's a whimsical and successful combination, just so long as you've got a toothpick handy.     

Recommend, with some dental floss

        AND

 

Photo Credit: Salazonchoc.com

  
Item: Dark Chocolate with Sea Salt & Pumpkin IPA
Percentage: 72% cacao 

Made By: Salazon 
Made In: Maryland
Purchased At: Whole Foods - Arlington, TX
Purchase Price: $3.99

Review: Such a shame. I really wanted this one to work. If it had been what I wanted, it would have been basically tailor-made for my father, who loves every one of these things. Alas, it was a whiff. The chocolate itself comes across as oddly bitter, which is probably a result of the beer, which doesn't make much of an appearance at all except in the aftertaste. The pumpkin and beer both take a back seat to the sea salt, which dominates the whole party and just leaves you wondering why the chocolate tastes a little funny. I'd love to see this idea done properly, but I'll definitely need to keep looking. In the meantime, if you're looking for a Salazon bar that actually works, stick with the sea salt and almond, which is MUY NOM.   

A Note About the Company: As much as I didn't care for the bar, the company is pretty cool. Salazon is a 100% organic, vegan, fair-trade certified chocolate company built on the premise that simple, salted dark chocolate is one of the greatest energy bars there is. They single-source their beans from the Dominican Republic and (usually) keep their bars pretty simple and streamlined. True to their backpacking roots, their trail series donates at least 2% of their profits to the Pacific Crest, Appalachian Trail, and Continental Divide conservancy associations.

Avoid
  

With love, Kat

Guide to Talking About Politics (Or, 5 Handy Tips for Not Being an Insufferable Ignoramus This Election Season): Dark Chocolate Spicy Caramel

Last night I engaged in the futile, barely entertaining practice of watching the first Presidential debate. I got through the whole painful thing with the help of some Ghirardelli and cheap beer, but we didn't learn anything new, no minds were changed, and I logged into Facebook afterwards with a sinking feeling in my stomach. Sure enough, there was the obligatory tsunami of partisan memes, "fact checks," stilted commentary, and general dysfunctional chaos. *sigh*

It frequently feels like we’ve reached peak political madness, with two of the most despised presidential candidates in recent memory, tons of private money pouring into our elections, the worst political polarization we've seen in decades, racial tension erupting, political scandals, banking scandals, violent attacks, and the media feasting on it all like a dog wolfing down a rotisserie chicken.
 

However, as bewildering and chaotic as everything seems right now, it is made infinitely worse by all the meaningless, partisan noise being bandied around on social media, message boards, and more, by generally well-meaning people whose minds are made up and only want to trumpet that to the world. It’s not that commentary is a bad thing – being engaged in the process is incredibly important – but just adding thousands more badly fact-checked sound bites to the giant partisan machine isn’t helping anything. 

So, on the theme of debates in general, I'd like to offer my 5 rules for behaving like an adult while discussing complicated stuff. Feel free to share! Civilizing the Internet may be a lost cause, but Borges wrote that "only lost causes should be attractive." Therefore, without further preamble, as a concerned citizen, sometime Internet user, and a politically-minded human being, I would like to offer this as my personal guide to being a Responsible Participant in the National Dialogue.

A Guide to Talking About Complicated Stuff

(Or, 5 Handy Tips for Not Being an Insufferable Ignoramus This Election Season)

1. Shut the Fuck Up

            For God’s sake, stop contributing to the meaningless noise.

Hollering that you support gun control doesn’t do a damn thing. Posting cartoonish memes of politicians looking dumb with some reductive, tragically biased, out-of-context phrase stamped over their face doesn’t do a damn thing. What are you trying to prove? That you’re more obnoxious than anyone else on Facebook? Because it’s working.

If you want everyone to know you’re in support of 2^nd amendment rights, then write something about why you support open carry, or whose policies you agree with and why. If you want to let your liberal flag fly, write a thoughtful post on the Democratic Party platform. Don’t junk up everyone’s feeds with more senseless vaguely political white noise.

I know: reposting these things is a quick, easy way to convey where you stand on an issue and connect with friends who agree. But this isn’t the time or place for these kinds of “atta-boy” affirmations. In a country struggling with a breakdown of dialogue and increasing polarization, we don’t need to be reinforcing this kind of simplistic, tribal reasoning. Trying to reduce an entire issue or candidate to the size of an Instagram post is about as ridiculous as trying to draw an accurate representation of the solar system with a 4-pack of Crayolas.

If you want to junk up my feed, post pictures of baby otters. Or your daughter’s latest crafting project. Or pasta recipes.

If you’re looking for affirmation, take it offline.

2. Do your Fucking Homework

In three parts! 

Part 1: Fact check your memes, people. Seriously. I swear to God, if I see one more meme saying that Clinton is going to take away all our guns I’m going to scream. You’ve heard it a million times before, and I’ll repeat it again here, because apparently it hasn’t stuck yet: Just because it’s online, does NOT make it remotely true. Even if it agrees with your ideology and looks semi-legit. Maybe especially if it checks those two boxes. This is one of Google’s highest callings – put it to work. The beauty of the Internet is that these answers are usually just a few clicks away, so you don’t typically even need to work that hard for it. You’ll look smarter and you’ll be able to actually speak intelligently about the things you wind up talking about.

Part 2: If you post something and then find out it’s inaccurate or untrue, take the damned thing down. Delete the post. There’s enough junk on the Internet that we don’t need gratuitous garbage information floating around perpetuating itself through infinite reposts.

And, finally, Part 3: be an accuracy cop. If you know your shit (I’m talking real policy, people, not partisan bullshit), and you see your friends and family perpetuating the false or partisan bullshit, call them on it. Be civil, be kind, don’t be an ass, but let’s be each other’s keepers.

Friends don’t let friends post stupid shit.

3. Argue Like a Grown-Up

Can we please all accept that using the “so-and-so is DUMB!” hasn’t been an effective way to win an argument since we were 6 years old? Our country is at a crossroads, and we still have throngs of otherwise responsible adults who fling around insults as a way of attempting to interact intelligently.

“Only idiots believe…” is a great way to alienate a bunch of people, particularly since it’s generally not true. “You’re stupid!” or “what an idiot!” are great phrases if you’re writing a comedy sketch, but have no place in discussions of real consequence. Absurd, condescending language like “moron,” “Drumph,” “Killary,” “lunatic,” and the spectacularly dysfunctional term “librtard” just manage to make you look like a flailing, reactionary neanderthal who's in over your head. 

Don’t call anyone a moron because of what they believe. Instead, make a real point about why you think what you do.

When in doubt, think back to your debate teacher. Would your debate teacher approve of how you’re approaching this? Then it probably won’t do any good. Reconsider. If you didn’t take debate, use this nifty rule of thumb: the first person to insult, degrade, or otherwise attack their opponent’s character loses the debate instantly.

Take the high road. The view is better from up there.

4. Accept that You Are Both Wrong and Ignorant. Yes, You.

Are you a Supreme Court Justice? Are you a Senator? The President, maybe? Maybe just a Governor? No? Didn’t think so.

So don’t act like you know everything there is to know about the law, the constitution, or interpreting said documents. Because you don’t. I don’t, either. I’m necessarily wrong about a lot of things, because I haven’t made it my life’s work to understand them.

However, there are people – brilliant, thoughtful, well-intentioned people – who have made it their life’s work to understand these things, and they’ve come to some pretty radically different conclusions. Justice Scalia, may he rest in peace, disagreed with me on a shit-ton of issues. And you know what? He was way better informed than I am to make those calls. You may disagree with Ruth Bader Ginsberg on everything under the sun, but she’s far, far better qualified than you to be making those decisions. That’s why she’s on the Supreme Court and you and I get into flame wars on Facebook.

Can we please all accept that we’re not right about everything? That we are, in fact, probably wrong about most things? That vastly different interpretations are valid, important, and contribute to this wonderful, evolving, living Democracy of ours? There has always been tension between progressive and conservative values, which is right and good. The real work of Democracy happens in the constructive wrangling between the two. (Emphasis on constructive.) Democracy doesn’t work when there’s a runaway victory of either ideology, and it doesn’t work when there’s a deadlock between the two. I daresay either scenario would eventually look pretty ugly for everyone after a while.

5. Fuck the Echo Chamber

One of the amazing things the Internet does is that it makes it really easy to find like-minded people to connect with. We may have a few token friends from across the aisle, but you can truly spend your entire life looking at comfortable, affirming newsfeeds that reassure you that your candidate is right, the other side is the enemy, and you should really pat yourself on the back for being so enlightened. Your friend posts things that make you feel oogey? Unfollow them! They don’t ever need to know, and you don’t ever have to see their icky opinionated socialist/gun rights/third-party candidate/race relations babble.

We listen to conservative/liberal talk radio, we read conservative/liberal news outlets, we talk to our conservative/liberal friends. Our conservative/liberal families reinforce our ideas and ideals, and we live, breathe, and move in a world where it is assumed that we will be good conservative/liberal soldiers.

These echo chambers we create for ourselves have the effect of reinforcing themselves over time. The longer we spend in them, the more information we have to support our previously formulated views, and the more validation we receive from the people who agree with us. This is terribly, terribly dangerous. We run the risk of becoming reasonably well-informed but radically different and fundamentally opposed species; speaking on the same issues, referencing the same source documents, but with no frame of reference to connect with or understand each other, and no incentive or impulse to make a real effort.

Please, please, don’t fall into this trap. Make some friends who disagree with you on important things, and then make a monthly lunch date to talk about those things. Dare to talk about politics at family gatherings. Listen to real, substantive commentary that you disagree with, and really try to connect with the people and motivations behind them. No one wakes up in the morning thinking “ah! Another lovely day to spread chaos and undermine Democracy!” Start by assuming that the people who make you uncomfortable have reasons, probably good reasons, for believing what they do, and then work backwards from there.

This whole Democracy thing doesn’t work if we lose sight of each other as human beings, and it doesn’t work if we stop listening to each other.

I look across the aisle, and I see people who are every bit as concerned about the direction and the welfare of this country as I am, but somehow we've managed to wind up speaking entirely different languages. We hurl catchy slogans and verbal feces at each other, hoping that something will stick, and wondering how this disastrous dumpster fire of an election could possibly have happened on our watch. I can't answer that. I'm just as baffled and dismayed as anyone else. But I think we could stand to return some civility and thoughtfulness to our national dialogue. That might help start the conversation.

Here's some chocolate to help. 

Item: Dark Chocolate Spicy Caramel 
Percentage: ???

Made By: Ghirardelli
Made In: San Leandro, CA
Price: $16.95 for 33 squares (I got the smaller bag, but I can't find my receipt)

Review: Ghirardelli is a giant, soulless chocolate conglomerate, befitting a celebration of the giant, soulless political machine. A member of the Lindt family of businesses, Ghirardelli has been making chocolate in the California Bay Area for more than 160 years, and was the first major chocolate producer to popularize putting the cacao percentage on the packaging. They are one of the better giant, soulless chocolate conglomerates, but that doesn't make them "serious" chocolate - their "dark" chocolate reads a lot like good milk chocolate, really (maybe 60-ish%?), and the vast amount of production mean that the chocolate has very little in the way of character. The Spicy Caramel flavor is a new one in their classic filled squares line - honestly, the flavor profile reminds me a lot of the Chili Nut M&Ms from this spring, just with somewhat better chocolate and without the peanut in the middle. The caramel is in a nice, oozy, creamy center, surrounded by a crisp chocolate shell, and chances are you'll find one or two of the squares in your bag have sprung a leak and lost some of their filling, but fortunately there's no shame in licking it off the foil wrapper. The "natural chili pepper flavor" is interesting - it doesn't really *taste* like anything, it's just kind of *there,* so the spicy adds some interest, but not much character. Still, it manages to cut the sweetness of the caramel nicely, and it's a fun, somewhat unusual flavor combination. Overall, I'm glad I got them.

RECOMMEND, WITH CRAPPY BEER AND A SIDE OF OBNOXIOUS PARTISAN BULLSHIT

With love,
 - K