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

Week of Obnoxiousness: Green & Black's Dark 70%

Tornado Shelter Selfie!

Well, if I were any less skeptical I’d be looking to astrology for answers. Not that I’ve had the worst week, because I haven’t, but still. It’s been a uniquely strange few days, replete with medical complications, emotional roller-coasters, and natural disasters (Oh, my!).

It started out innocuously enough, with a comically unfortunate showing of “Singing in the Rain” at the local AMC Theater. The theater staff actually forgot to play the film, forcing us to listen to a selection of truly horrifying elevator music until Andrew finally got up to find a staff member 6 minutes after the film was supposed to start. When they finally started the film, we got to see them pull it up on pay-per-view (no joke! Check out the picture!) fast-forward through all of the pre-show content and previews that we were supposed to be watching instead of listening to the awful elevator music, and then they neglected to dim the lights in the theater. *sigh* Well, at least the show was still fun. 

 ... except that two thirds of the way through we were interrupted by a tornado warning, commenced the most leisurely evacuation I've ever seen, and had to spend 20 minutes in the industrial, concrete-reinforced back hallways of the mall until they let us out just in time to see the last 30 seconds of our film. Feeling dissatisfied, we decided to go across the hall to see the last 15 minutes of “Moana” to make up for our truncated main feature, but about a minute after we sat down, the show mysteriously blipped out, and the screen went black to very loud protestations from the audience. And then the 3D showing of “Sing” that we picked as our third choice viewing wound up not being 3D at all (although the two thirds of it we saw was surprisingly cute). Fortunately we’re a good-natured bunch, and we ultimately had a really good time.

 

The weirdness accelerated on Monday, though, when Andrew’s father checked himself into the hospital with chest pains, and they found his blood pressure was inexplicably and dangerously high. Andrew spent the evening at the hospital with his parents, playing Pavarotti for his dad and generally being sweet, but without any real explanations or answers, waiting for things to stabilize.

On Tuesday I got a phone call from my mother (who lives with me now - post on that coming up soon) on my lunch break, asking if I’d seen her car parked outside the apartment building when I’d left for work that morning, because it absolutely wasn’t in the parking lot any more, and that afternoon I had a friend and co-worker rush out of the office early because his baby daughter had been unexpectedly admitted to the hospital.

That night, in an amazing display of synchronized ding-bat-ness, I decided to stay the night at Andrew’s apartment, and then we both accidentally neglected to set our alarms, leading us to oversleep by almost an hour on Wednesday. I was also terrifically awful at the post-work game of pool on Thursday, Andrew's beloved ear buds broke, my sister came down with the flu, I twisted my ankle on my morning run, and my mother had an episode of something that was either some sort of really awful freak drunkenness or food poisoning after a single shot of vodka.

All the endings were reasonably happy – the tornadoes didn’t destroy anything beyond some highway signs and a few chimneys, both Andrew’s dad and my co-worker’s daughter are taken care of and happily restored to their homes, my mom successfully retrieved her car from the tow lot, and no important meetings were missed by our oversleeping.

In the book I’m reading, a couple of brilliant psychologists note that the human mind is typically reluctant to acknowledge that patterns always happen within the context of larger, random happenings. We think of “random” as looking a particular way (chaotic, disorderly, etc.), and whenever things happen in groups or patterns, we look for logical explanations, because we can’t fathom how an entire week could be super bizarre just because life worked out that way for a few consecutive days. I can only assume that chance has made the past few days suck as badly as they have – otherwise I may just have to start paying attention to my horoscope. In the meantime, though, I’ll simply turn to the healing power of chocolate to get me through to the weekend. This is one of my personal favorite snacking chocolates that I discovered when making birthday truffles for Andrew last year. It’s not mind-blowing, just a good, hearty, clean chocolate flavor for when you need to clear your head and just focus on something other than the cat destroying the sofa cover and the fact that you woke up with an inexplicable headache. 

Still, bonne chance, everyone - just in case the stars are feeling cranky. (At least it's Friday!)

Item: DARK 70%
Percentage: 70% (Duh.)

Made By: Green & Black's
Made In: Poland

Purchased At: Whole Foods in Arlington
Price: $5

Review: Green & Black's, like Divine, is good, hearty snacking chocolate. This bar, from their Organic line, is a little more complex than the Divine 70%, but doesn't melt quite as nicely, and they're very comparable. The primary difference between the two is that Divine uses a bit more cocoa butter, making it a bit softer and melty-er, while Green & Black's Organic line A) is organic, and B) uses raw cane sugar instead of the white refined stuff. The price point is the same, the flavor is comparable, and both companies invest in sustainable farming and use only ethically sourced cacao, but the organic factor tends to tip the scales in favor of G&B's. The wrapper touts the bar's "fine Trinitario cacao beans, providing complex fruity notes and intense bittersweet chocolate aromas," but I wouldn't take it too seriously - it's mostly just good, straight-up chocolate. The chocolate flavor here is good and strong, but also falls a bit more on the sweeter, fruitier end of the scale, which makes it great for pairing with coffee or other substantial partners since it won't overpower them. This is also my go-to chocolate for making truffles. (I have a scotch truffle recipe that I could be convinced to share if anyone is looking for one.)  I also really appreciate the note on the back specifying that it's "Suitable for vegetarians" (meaning no white sugar!).

RECOMMEND

With love,
 - K 

Parisian Adventures: Extra Strong Dark Chocolate

Although this is a blog about chocolate and adventures, I wouldn't feel right publishing this without a brief note on the recent attacks. If you'd rather skip directly to the travels and chocolate, please scroll down. :-) 

 I have little patience for those who mourn for the state of the world and speak of simpler, less frightened times: every age has its terrors and tragedies. The only thing that has changed is the level of visibility, 

Most of us are relatively untouched by this tragedy aside from our Facebook photos.
Still, as heartbroken citizens of the world, we weep for the Parisians because they are our friends. But they are not the only victims, and this tragedy is far greater than the 127 lives taken on Friday. 

As we weep for Paris, let us also weep for the hundreds of thousands of Syrian refugees, broken and destitute, who will now be denied much-needed asylum because of the abuses of one. Let us weep for the millions of peaceful Muslims across the world who must now, yet again, follow their faith into a place of persecution, prejudice, and fear. Let us weep for those who will use this most recent tragedy as selfish justification to retreat even deeper into the darkest ruts of their own prejudice, building their internal walls higher, further separating themselves from humanity, compassion, rational thought, and generosity.

I will not ask for forgiveness or understanding for the attackers; it's far too soon for that. Rather, I simply ask that each person, in their own way, find the courage and compassion to simply be kind in the wake of this tragedy. Boundless, foolish, immoderate, overflowing kindness. Let us throw open our collectives arms to the needy and destitute, recognizing that it is a far greater tragedy to willingly condemn thousands of Syrian children to destitution and death. Let us find it in our hearts to smile at the woman in the hijab; she needs your kindness far more than you need your anger, and right now she is the closest thing in the world to the Samaritan in the New Testament.

This is a dark time for Islam, but that does not make it or its adherents to blame. In the scheme of the world, there have been far more Christian and Jewish terrorists than Muslim ones. 

We are each the last line of defense against our own inhumanity; some people lose that fight and shoot up cafes or teach their children hatred and intolerance. We don't have to, though. Let us find the strength to respond to injustice and violence with courage, justice, and kindness. May our outrage and fear not taint our humanity, and may we work through our anger and shock to find some kind of peace beyond this tragedy. 

Peace, y'all. 


And now, for your regularly scheduled chocolate post: 

This is part 3 of 4 chronicling my two-week adventure in Europe. For more pictures and stories, take a peek at my Facebook photo album HERE.  

I've only wanted to visit the City of Lights since I was, like, oh, I don't know... 12? This place has been calling to me from across the Atlantic since I've been old enough to tune my ears to those melodious French phonemes. I took two useless years of French in college, just so I could get my tongue around those beautiful syllables and somehow feel a little closer to the place where bread and cheese is a sanctioned lunch. This place that birthed impressionism. That was and is so beautiful, even Hitler's loyal commander and Governor of Paris, Dietrich von Choltitz, could not bring himself to destroy it, in spite of Hitler's order to level the city before letting it fall into Allied hands. Where butter and wine are major food groups, and, under the Tour d'Eiffel, we paid a man €2 to open our bottle of wine, and when we furtively asked if it would be ok for us to drink it on the street, he cheerfully chastised us, "Of course it's fine! This is Paris!"

I truly don't know what people have been talking about - I found the Parisians to be delightful, kind, and accommodating. Maybe it was my desperate but well-intentioned attempts to dredge up the fading remnants of my college French, or maybe it was our wide-eyed admiration and general footsore benevolence that bought us some goodwill. Regardless, the French people were very patient and generous, even coaching me gently through phrases and vocab mysteriously misplaced from my memory banks from long neglect.

We visited the catacombs, where, 130 steps below street level, 7 million deceased Parisians lay at peace in the city's old stone quarries. So many bones... It's easy, in the face of so many deconstructed skeletons, to forget that they each belonged to people who fought with their parents, hated peas, teased other children, bought plums and flour at the market, woke up to feed the baby at 3 in the morning, loved fresh bread, whose friends gave them playful nicknames and teased them about the way they mispronounced street names, longed to see the sea, fell in love, fell out of love, maybe buried their parents or children or friends, and in the end suffered all the indignities and fear of death themselves. Even their names are gone. These were full lives, far larger than the sum of their skeletal frames, and now all that's left of their multitude of unrecorded subtleties, quirks, phobias, and preferences is laid to rest in this simple and sobering labyrinth of humanity. This is no lurid, frightening exhibition of leering horrors, it is rather a respectful monument to the magnitude of death, and a powerful metaphor of how, both literally and metaphorically, we have built on the unknown and forgotten millions and billions who have gone before us. For, in the beautiful words of George Eliot, "... the growing good of the world is partly dependent on unhistoric acts; and that things are not so ill with you and me as they might have been, is half owing to the number who lived faithfully a hidden life, and rest in unvisited tombs."

As the perfect send-off, on Sunday morning we attended Gregorian mass in the breathtakingly beautiful Cathédrale Notre-Dame de Paris - a living, breathing reminder that wonders from the 12th century can still be as transcendent and relevant today as they ever have been. Even as I got frustrated with the tourists milling about and taking pictures during mass (really, guys - you're giving tourists a bad name. If the sign says "silence," that refers to your shutter clicks and whispering), the music was positively ethereal, the voices of just four singers filling the cathédrale to bursting with all the marvelous help of the magical 12th century acoustics.

 
Even so, I have a confession: I did not eat any Parisian chocolate. 

Maybe I was distracted by all the macarons, croissants, and baguettes. Maybe I was too busy stepping into a new patisserie every third block to try a new tart, pastry, or yet another croissant. Maybe I was too preoccupied with the fifth bottle of wine in three days, or our perfectly delightful hotel balcony, where we drank wine and talked and laughed in our pajamas until all hours of the night, or watching the Tour d'Eiffel light up like glittery lace against the night sky. Regardless, I don't know how it happened. I'm bewildered. 

Fortunately, I had a backup plan. I never travel without chocolate. 

So, when we found ourselves in a boat on the Grand Canal in the park at le Chateau de Versailles, I was able to pull out a bar from back home for us to munch on. Sadly, the chocolate was less than stellar, but Versailles made up for all chocolatey deficiencies. The gardens alone were bewildering in their beauty and grandeur, and the palace was staggering and swiftly overwhelming. One can only take in so much gilding and mythological imagery before gasping for the open air and seeking reprieve in yet another croissant.

Paris was everything I thought it would be. Every bit as beautiful and delicious and affirming as I have been anticipating. This place, pinned together with a powerful appreciation for beauty and an elegance of execution rare on this earth, calls to me. I am so incredibly grateful I could answer. 

Item: Extra Strong Dark Chocolate 
Percentage: 77%

Made By: Chocolove
Made In: Boulder, Colorado
Purchased At: Whole Foods Market - Arlington, TX
Purchase Price: $3.50

Review: Sadly, in the realm of plain, dark snacking chocolate, this one ranks rather near the bottom of my list. The texture is oddly chalky and tough, it doesn't melt nicely, and the flavor is uninteresting at best. I could blame that on traveling across the Atlantic in the bottom of my backpack, but I tend to think that's just the way it is; better than nothing, but just barely. I should have gone for another baguette instead. 


MEH

With love, 
 - K