Fort Smith Find: "World's Finest" Chocolate Almond

I’m behind on my posts! Trying to get caught up... First up:

Last week I took a trip to Tulsa and Little Rock for a project I’m working on – I flew into Tulsa, rented a car, worked all day, and then drove the four hours to Little Rock to work the next day. Not knowing if there would be a single bite of interesting food in the great expanse of nothingness between Tulsa and Little Rock, I tasked Andrew with finding out if there was any dinner to be had, and boy-howdy did he ever come through.

He flagged R&R’s Curry Express in Fort Smith – an Indian place with stellar reviews and a closing time 45 minutes after I’d be passing through the tiny township. The GPS led me a merry chase, insisting that the restaurant was, in fact, an hour north in Springdale (it was not), and that it was closed (it was not), but when I finally located the place sharing a building with a small independent gas station it was everything I was hoping for.

Papdi chaat - crispy bits of fried naan suspended in an amazing soup of spiced yogurt, tamarind, and mint chutney *swoon*

Having a company card and a slightly exorbitant daily food budget, I ordered the papdi chaat appetizer which showed up looking like a delicious Indian stew, with crunchy chips of naan suspended in a sweet, complex, creamy, delicious sludge of mint and yogurt and goodness knows what all else. It was divine, and unlike anything I’d ever had before. As I was still trying to navigate it, a man sitting and eating dinner with his family at the table next to me, called out to me gently in his lilting Indian accent – “ma’am, excuse me. You’re supposed to mix it up. Mix it all up, add a little salt, and eat it with a spoon – it’s good!” This was the point where I noticed he was wearing an apron, and realized that I was in the presence of the restaurant owner.

What ensued, was a thoroughly delightful meal. The malai kofta was delicious, the mystery appetizer was crazy good, and I got to know the gentleman and his wife who own both the restaurant and the gas station next door. They moved to Fort Smith from LA almost 10 years ago, looking for a small town to raise their kids in, opened the gas station, and then decided to expand their operation when the space next door opened up. These hard-working entrepreneurs happily conversed with their kids in fluent Hindi, the daughters regularly came by my table to top off my iced tea, they all assured me that staying past closing time was absolutely fine, and, as I was winding down and looking for the check, the second daughter appeared at my table with a box of chocolate, asking if I’d like to buy a bar to help her school purchase new computers.

Yes. Yes, indeed, I would.

I retrieved the last of my cash from the car, purchased a bar, and got back on the road to Little Rock.

One of the things I love the most about traveling is finding little hidden gems and supporting local businesses with my reimbursable dollars. This was exactly the kind of place that I truly love giving business to. Right down to the young chocolate seller running out to my car after I left to make sure that I’d gotten a straw with my to-go iced tea, this restaurant is awash with the delicious food and lovely, personable feel that makes me really look forward to the next time I get to drive through Fort Smith. Hopefully next time I’ll get to visit more than 30 minutes before close.

Item: Almond 

Percentage: Who knows! Probably in the 20s, if I had to hazard a guess

Made By: World’s Finest Chocolate 

Made in: Chicago, IL   

Purchased At: R&R's Curry Express 
Purchase Price: $1

Review: This is pretty much an almond Hershey’s Kiss in bar form, but maybe a little heavier on the vanillin and a little lighter on the chocolate than Hershey’s. Sugar content is about the same. Strong notes of vanillin, powdered milk, and nostalgia. As Andrew said, “It’s the finest World’s Finest Chocolate I’ve ever had.” Not exactly a bar for chocolate snobs who are hung up on cacao content (*ahem*), but a perfectly reasonable nibble for dessert or to take the edge off an afternoon sweet tooth. The one thing the bar really gets right is the size – at just 1.3 ounces it’s quite small, but the size is actually about perfect for how sweet it is, and the bar is divided up into four nice, bite-sized chunks, making it easy and enjoyable to demolish. Plus, it’s for a good cause!

Chocolate Bar: Meh

R&R’s Curry Express in Fort Smith, AR: Highly Recommend

With Love, Kat

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

NOLA 'Til You Die!: Bourbon Cask Aged Dark

Happy New Year! 
Also, happy 28th birthday to me!

As it so happens, my birthday conveniently falls on one of the biggest party days of the year. New Year's Eve birthdays aren't that uncommon, really - I've met probably half a dozen other people who share my birthday, including one aunt, two coworkers, and a neighbor, as well as Ben Kingsley, Henri Matisse, and John Denver (none of whom I've actually met, but I'd like to think sharing a birthday makes us honorary friends). 

Aside from the dreaded birthday/Christmas present combo (which really doesn't bother me. Truly, I have enough stuff already), there are three primary reasons why I absolutely love my birthday: 
  - I always have the next day off, along with most of the rest of the world, so I never have to worry about staying up too late, rescheduling festivities, or not having a recovery day. 
  - I never have to throw my own birthday parties. Everyone is already in the mood to celebrate, so there are plenty of options for celebrations to crash with minimal hassle. 
  - It provides a lovely clean start to the year. New year for the world, new year for me!

Usually I prefer to let my birthday play second fiddle to the calendar's (it has seniority, after all), but this year I was feeling feisty and wanted to do something special, so Mignon found us a couple of tickets to New Orleans, booked beds at a hostel, and we headed out for the home of Cajun food and street jazz.

There is a wonderful Tennessee Williams quote which gets a great deal of mileage in the multitudinous NOLA gift shops: "America has only three cities: New York, San Francisco, and New Orleans. Everywhere else is Cleveland." Although I've never been to Cleveland, I can see where there is some truth behind Williams' playful hyperbole. As someone who has spent a lot of time in various American cities, most of them can be mistaken for each other relatively easily aside from a few tell-tale signs. Not so with New Orleans. 

From the voodoo shops and beautiful old houses with the wooden shutters, to the trolleys with the faulty light fixtures and the drag queens hollering about drink specials on Bourbon Street, New Orleans has a feeling all of its own. Unlike most places, which sometimes seem manufacture culture out of hoodies and coffee table books, here it seems to boil up from under the sidewalks and breath through the shutters and unruly window-boxes of the colonial-style buildings, and everything from the gift shops to the abundance of horn players seems to have sprung into existence spontaneously to preach the gospel of this place.   

 
We wandered the streets and antique shops of the Garden District, where the shopkeepers speak French, a quiet, old world culture still hums, and the sidewalks are in the process of performing a quiet disappearing act, slowly eaten away by the roots of the beautiful, ancient trees under their blankets of moss. We ate beignets at Cafe Du Monde, walked along the bank of the Mississippi, and meandered the aisles of the bewitching Beckham's Bookshop - a second-hand bookstore on Decatur with such delightful genre titles as "True Crime & Rascality," where the old man who runs the place sits up front with his book and pencil in hand, quietly marking prices and guiding people through the mis-matched, labyrinthine aisles of the store. 

We capped our visit with a magnificent Creole feast at the Gumbo Shop, with black beans and rice, corn, creamed spinach, gumbo, and bourbon bread pudding; we ate until we were full to bursting, went back to Cafe Du Monde and ate some more, and then went and fed our spirits with a long night of jazz at the Spotted Cat.

Above all, New Orleans is entirely unapologetic. It exists exactly as itself, with no accommodations or excuses; there is no scrubbed, sterilized tourist experience here. The streets are dirty, the parties unruly, the homeless mingle freely with the crowds everywhere you go. As it hums with the bone-deep history of a culture which found itself long ago, no concessions are made for your comfort as an outsider - NOLA has a life to live, and you are in her house.

There are more praline shops than I could count, and you can buy liquor in any corner store or Walgreens, but, alas, New Orleans is not know for its chocolate. Fortunately, my sweetie provided just the thing: bourbon barrel aged chocolate from the heart of Brooklyn, New Orleans' brassy spiritual cousin. The dark, boozy bar was just the thing to complement our explorations of the city. 

Photo Credit: chocolatepath.com

We didn't stay in Louisiana for New Year's Eve, although I'm sure the NYE party on Bourbon Street is second only to Mardi Gras. It didn't feel right to be away from home for the start of the year. So, we returned to Texas on the afternoon of the 31st for a more local birthday/New Year's Eve celebration. After a truly endearing party with balloons, party games, ginger beer, a purple tiara, and a hatchet (wait, whaaaat?), we headed into Fort Worth to watch the fireworks at Sundance Square, and I got to ring in the new year with some of my very favorite people in the whole world. 

I don't tend to believe in resolutions, but I do have some goals for the year; I'd like to be more generous to my friends with my time and energy. I'd like to spend more time on writing and music. I'd like to travel. Talk less about the weather and more about life, the universe, and everything. Be more diligent about practicing yoga, gratitude, and guitar. Maybe look into going back to school. 

I love this life so very much. 2016 is going to be a good one, guys. I can feel it.


Item: Bourbon Cask Aged
Percentage: 82%

Made By: Raaka
Made In: Brooklyn, NY
Purchased At/Price: (Gift)

Review: At 82%, this bar is pretty stiff - not for the faint of heart. Still, it's quite rich, melts smoothly, and the bourbon/chocolate pairing is a match a made in heaven. This is particularly fruity, tough chocolate with a strong, clean bourbon finish - very good stuff. There is actually no alcohol in this bar, which makes the flavoring even more remarkable - the beans are simply aged for four weeks in bourbon barrels, where they take on some of the boozy, woodsy flavor the previous tenant. That said, several other folks who tried it said they didn't get as much bourbon flavor as I did, so maybe I was just looking for it.I haven't tried much un-roasted (or "virgin") chocolate, but it does seem to give the beans some room to retain their character. Must experiment further. 

RECOMMEND

With love,
 - K