All the World's a Stage: Beatrice Honeycomb Milk Chocolate

This is part 2 of 4 chronicling my two-week adventure in Europe. For more pictures and stories, take a peek at my Facebook photo album HERE. 


          We continue with England, the Motherland...

England was full of delights: renting bikes and cycling through Cambridge to have tea in a beautiful apple orchard. Sitting in camp chairs beside the river in front of Glory's charming home, drinking Pimm's and watching the swan making lazy circles around the house boats. The simultaneously reverent and whimsical Beefeater tour of the Tower of London, concluding in the beautiful chapel in the heart of the Tower where the lovely young Lady Jane Grey was buried in an unmarked traitor's grave, mere days after her coronation, along with hundreds of others with nothing to mark their passing. And the Borough Market! If you find yourself in London, go there. Just go. Delicious, abundant, affordable street food from all corners of the word, a mere hop across the Thames from St. Paul's Cathedral, right in the heart of the city. 

The sightseeing was wonderful, the Russian tea house captivating, and I cherished the opportunity to see Glory in her natural habitat, but altogether, more than any of our other destinations, England felt like the connective tissue of our journey. Although I came to enjoy the well-mannered countryside as it flashed past in the train windows, England was primarily a staging ground for us to shuttle back and forth between our various other destinations, and I feel like I barely got to know it.

In spite of the brevity of our visit, there was one brilliant, captivating, perfect highlight of our time in London... 

 
Allow me to set the stage, so to speak: I curate my bucket list very carefully. There are about 120 things on it, all of which I've carefully considered and selected from a much larger and ever-changing pool of possibilities. However, out of these 120 items, there are a handful which serve as immovable focal points for the rest of the list. These are the things which are so integral to my vision of myself and my life that I truly can't imagine them not happening at some point. 

 
Attending a Shakespeare play at the Globe is one of these. And it was the best kind of happenstance that the show running while we were in London was "As You Like It" - my favorite of Shakespeare's comedies, and one of my fondest Austin student theater memories from my youth. The stars simply aligned, and, £5 later, there we were - standing in the yard, watching some of the most joyful and skillfully executed theater I've ever seen. In that beautiful, historic venue, where so many remarkable actors have trod the boards, just a few hundred yards from where Shakespeare himself once performed, those precious three hours seemed to fly. It was a gift I won't ever forget. 

Afterwards, in the gift shop, amidst the First Folio facsimiles, tote bags, and lapel pins, I made a delightful discovery: 

Named for Shakespeare's beloved heroines, these sweet little things made perfect souvenirs. I had a hard time narrowing it down (Milk sea salt for Miranda! Dark chili for Katarina! Milk cinnamon for Desdemona! Dark espresso for Portia!), but in the end the choice was clear: I couldn't possibly pass up my beloved Rosalind (dark and raspberry - how appropriate for such an intelligent, headstrong young lady), but the one I was most intrigued by was Beatrice. Milk chocolate with honeycomb. Honeycomb? Yep. Definitely honeycomb. Fascinating! Well worth dipping into the 32% realm to try it out.

In a broader sense, so much of my personal history and personality is tied to the culture and literature of this place that it almost seems like home in an odd, disjointed kind of way. Although my connection to England wasn't as visceral or emotional as Ireland, I will certainly return to walk the halls of Oxford, track down 221B Baker Street, visit the hallowed Royal Shakespeare Theater in Stratford-upon-Avon, and meander the well-tended lanes of Hyde Park.

In the meantime, I will content myself with learning to make scotch eggs. Heaven help my poor, abused kitchen. 

Item: Beatrice Honeycomb Milk
Percentage: 32% cacao 

Made By: Sweet Theater presents Shakespeare's Leading Ladies
Purchased At: RSC Shop, Globe Theater - London, England
Purchase Price: £1.00 (Full-size bars available for £3.50)

Review: I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from honeycomb chocolate, but it is curiously satisfying. Our good friends, the bees, deliver deliciousness once again. Admittedly, this darling (albeit gimmicky) bar probably isn't the greatest treatment of it - the chocolate itself is a fairly standard 32% milk setting, which is both overly sweet (unlike it's designated namesake) and a little overpowering. That makes it even more remarkable how well the honeycomb manages to hold its own. Delightful, surprising fragments, alternately chewy and crunchy, serve as the culinary equivalent of glitter, except that you don't have to vacuum it out of the carpet for three years. The honeycomb is remarkably savory, carrying a light, centering honey taste without stacking more sweetness on top of the already very sweet chocolate. Would highly recommend honeycomb chocolate, although possibly not this particular instance as much as some others. More investigation is needed.

Recommend

With love, 
 - Kat 

A Retrospective in Cheap Chocolate: Lindt Intense Orange

Disclaimer: this post might seem excessively verbose and irrelevant at first, but it all ties into the theme of this particular bar of chocolate and how it affects me personally. Stay with me.

      Rosebuuuud.    *Snow globe shatters on the ground*.

A little bit less than one year ago I was living a mere two blocks away from the ornate, old house where I live today. A small, darkly-lit, but nicely furnished two-bedroom apartment above a fancy diner was the place that I called home, and I shared that home with a good friend, who also happened to be my other good friend's girlfriend (which was not a weird situation, as it seems to be in writing). The place had charm and character. There was a large red brick wall which divided the kitchen and the living room, and it looked as if it had been through several wars and just as many re-modelings.  I was often awakened at 7:00am by the staff of the diner below, who liked to blast the same upbeat polka music at extreme volume every single morning while preparing the kitchen for a day's work.

Also, within the red brick walls of that village apartment, I experienced the harshest winter of my life (which doesn't mean a lot coming from a Texan, but most of the New York locals agree with me). The cold, precipitation, and wind chill were as bitter as they were unrelenting, and most of the regular activity in my life was slowed to a sluggish, groaning halt; gigs were few, and they were often cancelled due to weather conditions; my regular job of teaching music was snowed-out half the time, and when it wasn't, only half of my students would show up on any given day; traveling anywhere in the region was a pain in my freezing posterior, if not outright hazardous; on top of that, my roommate was very often gone for days at a time. 

Many people would have had an awful, cabin-feverish time in that situation, but that was not the case for me. On the contrary: it was one of the most interesting and creative times in my memory. I managed to split my seemingly-infinite free time equally between work (music practice, composition, writing, art) and play (daydreaming, reading, talking on the phone, sleeping in, the occasional movie), and each one inspired and sustained the other. It was one of the few times of my life when I had a very regular routine which I lived by; the beauty was that abstract thinking and artistic productivity were included in the routine! Patience without indolence; structure and abstraction; focus and freedom; poetry and prose; it's the only time that I've sustained a disciplined-but-bohemian lifestyle like that for any extended period. In many ways it was a dream-come-true for an artsy introvert such as myself.

Of course, the winter came to an end, as did my lease, and that era of my life; I moved a block-and-a-half away, to the spare room at my friend's place (the aforementioned ornate, old house which I live in now). It was such a short distance to move that I could have walked all of my stuff over from one place to the other in less than a day, but the mere block-and-a-half of concrete and cracked stone sidewalks that separates me from my old apartment seems to be a much farther distance, because, to me, it represents the distance between two chapters of my life. A lot has changed since then, and it often seems as if the vague memories of a year ago are the memories of another person; another life; another set of motivations, impulses, desires, and capabilities. Nostalgia has never suited me, and I very rarely hold on to objects purely for sentimental value; there's too much real value in the here-and-now. That being said, meeting a stranger from my past, or a taste or smell from years ago, can trigger something deeper, darker, and more irresistible than any bar of chocolate: the memory of being another man.

One of these memories is of the only decent bar of chocolate sold at the village grocery store during the harshest winter: Lindt Excellence Intense Orange. Consequently, it was one of the chocolates I ate all winter. It was usually accompanied by a steaming mug of spiced black tea, and a long session of songwriting.

 Item: Lindt Excellence Intense Orange Dark Chocolate

Made By: Lindt and Sprungli Inc.

Made In: Stratham, NH

Purchase price: $2.50

Review: Firstly, this is cheap chocolate. Very cheap. It's made by a massive, mindless, corporate, chocolate-making machine with a yearly revenue of more than 3 billion Swiss francs, and a work force of more than 10,000 people. The recipe has been maximized for price-effectiveness and consistency. They over-roast their beans to cover up their mediocre quality; this process leeches the character from the beans, and makes each batch perfectly consistent. They add exorbitant amounts of sugar to hide the coarse, over-processed flavor of the beans. The 'orange pieces' in the ingredients list are actually a homogenized and hardened pulp of oranges, apples, sugar, thickening agents, and the blood of a virgin. Long story short: this is one step up from a Snicker's bar in quality.

But I love a good Snicker's bar. And I love this. The flavor is a blunt and sugary mix of almond and orange; the chocolate flavor is barely noticeable, and I'm surprised that they can get away with calling this 'dark chocolate'. There's no subtlety to it at all, but there's a joyful, purely-indulgent character to it. It's candy, plain and simple, and the quality is actually very high, considering the price point. When people want candy, they're usually looking for one thing: sugar, with some other stuff added in. That's what this bar delivers, while simultaneously being half-decent chocolate.

Cream of the crap, ladies and gentlemen.

-Will

That's All Blarney: Irish Coffee Truffles

About two months ago I woke with a start from a terrifying dream: I was giving a customer loyalty workshop. A perfectly mundane, fully clothed, everyday, customer loyalty workshop. Exactly the kind of workshop that I conduct on a monthly basis at work. *shudder*

Ladies and gentlemen, when you start dreaming about work, it's past time for a genuine, honest-to-God vacation.  

Fortunately there was light at the end of the tunnel - it took us almost two years to go to the UK to visit our friend Glory, but we finally got around to it, and no one will ever be able to accuse us of lacking ambition. Four countries and eight cities in 13 days? Madness! Nevertheless, that is exactly what Taryn, Heather, Glory, and I set out to do a few weeks ago - and I'll be bamboozled if we didn't accomplish just exactly that. 

Ireland, England, France, and Scotland. I return to you weary and footsore, with a backpack full of dirty laundry and an uncontrollable craving for Mexican food, but my heart is full to bursting. I have seen so many beautiful things and places.

This is part 1 of 4 chronicling my two-week adventure in Europe. For more pictures and stories, take a peek at my Facebook photo album HERE.  


          So, I begin with Ireland. 

I wanted so desperately to love Ireland that I was almost afraid to go there and see it for myself, for fear of being dramatically disillusioned. Silly me. 

 

 
There is a spaciousness about Ireland. The people seem to live here alongside and in spite of the landscape; Ireland has not been tamed. It is still alive and well, and coexists with its inhabitants, rather than being contained or reshaped by them. Driving down the narrow, gorgeous, winding, terrifying roads, after choking down the fear of imminent death by tour bus, the next impression is that of expansive, rustic beauty. The entire landscape has an effulgent, brilliantly green case of perpetual bed head. 

 
This place has an almost umbilical tie to things that are old and beautiful, and everything they do is teeming with life. The Gaelic language is everywhere, and castles and ruins are preserved, but not obsessively restored. The past speaks for itself here. Goats openly roam the historic cliffs, and cattle graze just across the stream from castles and gardens teeming with tourists. Ancient things are not relegated to irrelevance and incongruity, to be gawked at behind glass; they are as indispensable a part of life as the nearly universal WiFi. 50-cent penny whistles with plastic mouthpieces co-exist seamlessly with 300 year-old pipes which have been passed down through generations.

In everything from the ballads, street art, and reels, to the effusive gardens spilling over the little winding rock walls, there is an uncontrollable impulse to express. One can well believe that "Irish writers are either completely incomprehensible, or they win Nobel prizes. Or, in the case of Samuel Beckett, both." (A gem dropped by they host of our musical pub crawl in Dublin.) I could almost believe that these people dream in poetry.

We spent a day and a half in Dublin, drove to the Cliffs of Moher, spent the evening in Cork, then continued on to Blarney before departing Ireland for England, but those few short days have adopted a much larger profile in my memory than their brief tenure would suggest. Like fajita steam, Ireland clings to my clothes and hair, prolonging the enjoyment long after the dishes have been cleared.

There is something about this country which resonates with me in a way I don't entirely understand, but one thing is clear; somewhere in the spaces between listening to the uileann pipes and Gaelic ballads in a cozy Dublin pub, sitting on the Cliffs, and climbing the winding stairs to the ramparts of Blarney Castle, Ireland has eased its way into my heart and settled in to stay. 

 Item: Irish Coffee Truffles

Made By: Blarney Chocolate Factory
Made In: Blarney, Ireland
Purchased At: Blarney Chocolate Factory - Blarney, Ireland
Purchase Price: €1.95

Review: In the interest of full disclosure, I'm not generally a white chocolate fan, but this beautiful creation was too perfect to pass up. This is a particularly busy truffle - White and dark hard chocolate shell, a smooth, whiskey-spiked ganache center, and topped with a delicate poof of cinnamon-sprinkled cream. Frankly, I found the white chocolate briefly overwhelming, but after that it's all uphill - smooth, downright creamy center with a beautiful, boozy finish. The coffee flavor kind of disappears, but it's still an enjoyable, charming tribute to a classic, heart-warming Irish drink. 

Recommend

With love, 
 - Kat

The River Song: Divine Dark Chocolate with Raspberries

Photo Credit: Kimberly Shryack Johnson

There is, perhaps, nothing quite so quintessentially summer as floating down a river with a cooler of drinks surrounded by people you love. So, as August comes to a close and we face the myriad pumpkin drinks, dark nail polishes, sweater dresses, slightly grungier lawns, and proliferation of Halloween stuff that accompany the onset of fall, I packed up the car, nabbed my stalwart travel companion, Taryn, and drove down to New Braunfels to join a large group of other friends in floating down the Guadalupe for one last summer hurrah. 

Photo Credit: Taryn Staley

It had been far, far too long. I had forgotten how magical it is. 

After getting past the first gasp-worthy shock of the ice cold river creeping up your legs, and the initial logistical hassle of getting everything inflated, configured, tied, settled, and launched, there is an magical, expansive, untethered feeling that sets in just as you round that first bend and the launch point disappears. No gadgets, no notifications, no to-do lists, no shouda-woulda-coulda. You can't rush the river. You very quickly realize how comfortable you are with doing nothing at all. There is absolutely nothing in the world to do except sit back, enjoy the water and the good company until, without warning you're at the end.  

I had also forgotten how conducive the water is to extended philosophical musings. Major kudos to dear friend and fellow fan-of-talking-about-serious-things, Cord, who bore the brunt of my aimless, introspective ramblings.

Photo credit: Beth Horst Vinson

Four hours wasn't nearly long enough (although my sunburned knees might disagree...).

 Although I ended up a bit *ahem* over-served on the river and slept through most of the afternoon, it was still a thoroughly delightful day, and we managed to roust out in time to catch my good friends with the Mark McKinney Band play the closing set over at the River Road Ice House.

Granted, as relaxing as the river is, the sun, the water, and the drinking can take their toll, and I got back to Arlington on Sunday feeling like I needed a weekend to recover from the weekend. Fortunately I had some help in that department: extensive snuggles with the fur children, coupled with a fluffy adventure novel and some 70% cacao therapy had me feeling right as rain in no time. (Except for my poor knees. Ow.)
 

Regardless, after almost an entire summer on dry land and many years away from the river, it was reassuring how intuitive it was to get back to it. And now that I have my own tube I will certainly be returning to the river sooner rather than later. It won't be years before my next float. 


Item: Dark Chocolate with Raspberries
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 does good, solid snacking chocolate. Nothing too adventurous or remarkable, but absolutely reliable and top-of-the field for the price point. The time-honored chocolate/raspberry pairing works very well here - their nice, fruity 70% dark is a good base for the tartness of the raspberries. Texturally the freeze-dried raspberry bits are a little odd, but more interesting than off-putting, and not overly fussy. That might be a mood thing, though. I'm kind of fickle when it comes to textures in my chocolate. And the fruit/chocolate ratio is spot on. 

Recommend

A quick note about the company: With US headquarters in D.C., Divine chocolate is 45% owned by the Kuapa Kokoo fair-trade cocao farmer's co-op in Ghana, supporting transparent, accountable, and democratic business operations. Their misson broadly encompasses supporting cacao farmers in earning a fair living for themselves and their families, empowering women in Ghana to participate across all areas of the industry, and to support environmentally friendly cacao cultivation. Originally launched in the '90s to be the first fair-trade brand in the UK to compete with mass-produced chocolate, Divine has been thriving ever since, finally coming to the US as recently as 2007. 


With love,
 - Kat 

One More Maine Point: Equal Exchange Lemon Ginger Dark

This seems like a slightly redundant post on my part, because it concerns another trip to Maine. Yes, I actually drove up to Maine again within two weeks of my previous visit with Kat. (It only seemed like a bad idea while I was in the middle of the 9-hour drive. After that things shaped up nicely.) My good friend Stevie, who is a mutual friend of my siblings, was visiting me in the Hudson Valley, and we decided to drive up there again and say hi to the 4H clan. There were adventures a-plenty; we stayed up late talking about everything ranging from hypothetical dilemmas (would you want to know if you lived in The Matrix?) to bean-hole-bean-pit-beans; we jumped in the river; we ate Thai food; we bought coffee in two different coffee shops within twenty minutes; we had a major caffeine crash on the way back from Maine (fortunately, not a literal one); we BOUGHT CHOCOLATE.

It actually felt like a painfully brief visit, just like the previous one had. The working schedule of a professional musician is a very strange one, and it's always subject to last-minute changes and overhauls. A musician can't maintain any kind of professional reliability if they turn down work, which means that essentially nothing is more important than taking whatever gigs you can. This led to an all-too-short visit both times, since I had a gig the first time, and a rehearsal the second time. It's the career I've chosen, but it sometimes seems like a very brutal one. That's a story for an entirely different blog, though.

I bought several different bars of Chocolate in Maine, but this was the most interesting one:

Item: Organic Lemon Ginger Dark Chocolate with Black Pepper

Made By: Equal Exchange Chocolates
Made In: Switzerland
Purchase Price: Approx $4

Cacao Percentage: 55

Review: 

First of all, I should say that I don't usually consider 55% chocolate to be 'dark'. I typically think of anything above 70% as being dark, because anything below that can be overwhelmingly sweet. (Not to say that it always is overwhelmingly sweet. I do appreciate lighter chocolates.) I prefer for chocolates which are marketed as 'dark' to have a hearty, meal-like quality that's closer to black coffee than a Snickers Bar. That being said, I was taken aback at first by how sweet this bar was. It's definitely candy; no hearty meal here. There's a lot of candied Ginger in the bar, as well two different types of cane sugar. Sweetness like that is slightly off-putting to me at first, but after I've had a piece or two I usually warm up to it, and that's just what happened here. After taking a bite, it seems like the ginger and the lemon are almost perfectly balanced; for a second it seems like the lemon might be the dominant flavor, but then the taste of the lemon completely dies in the after-taste, and you're left with nothing but candied ginger. The chocolate flavor is not strong enough; this should be a 65% bar.

The texture is complicated, which can be bad, but in this case it works out pretty nicely. There are chewy/crunchy bits of candied ginger throughout, as well as smaller, less noticeable bits of black pepper. It's slightly distracting, but I don't mind it too much.

This is very good chocolate for the price, and I think they could have gotten something very special out of it if they had upped the percentage a little bit. Recommended, especially for fans of candy-esque chocolate.

-Will

To All Maine Points: Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Sourdough Truffles

Hello, and welcome!

You’ve found your way into our repository of all things chocolate.

Who are we? We are Will and Kat – a brother and sister duo reporting in from opposite sides of the continent (New York and Texas, respectively). We share many interests: classic science fiction novels, sleeping in, traveling, breakfast tacos, talking philosophy until 3 in the morning, our other two siblings… and finding that perfect bar of blissfully dark chocolate.

We eat a lot of chocolate. We try bars, truffles, and other confections. We’ll pick them up from grocery stores, friends, bookstores, airport gift shops, high-end chocolate stores, and gas stations. Every once in a while we’ll stumble across a delightful chocolate oasis that merits a little more personal attention (Fruition Chocolate comes to mind. Or Lucky Chocolate - bring back the goat cheese truffle!!!). And, since we do all this stuff anyway, it just makes sense to keep all our findings in one place, and that place is here.

I (Kat) am going to kick things off by singing the blues a little. One thing I've never had to do before this year, that sucks beyond belief, is spend an entire summer away from all of my siblings. 

It is a lonely, off-center feeling when you realize that your family is so far away. There are lots of little peripheral realizations that accompany the feeling: that you can't just hop in the car and drive down for the weekend. That you are no longer anyone's primary emergency contact. That if the zombie apocalypse went down tomorrow you would probably never see them again.That they can't commiserate about the awful Texas weather and the Blue Bell famine. That they've probably forgotten what decent enchiladas even taste like (poor souls). All those little things just hint at the core of the issue, though, which is simply that they are a long way away from me.

I want them to be here. I want us to all live in the same city again. I want us all to talk on a weekly or even daily basis. I want to lie on the floor and watch Star Trek and throw popcorn at each other and talk about stupid things and important things and funny things and nerdy things and delicious things until all hours. I miss them all terribly with something remarkably akin to homesickness. 

So, frustrated, heartsick, and off-balance, I hopped on an airplane two weeks ago and flew the East Coast to get my sibling fix. 

What wonders a long weekend can work on a weary soul. It was three days worthy of our goofy collective; with a late-night diner visit, great music, traipsing through the woods, campfires, goats, good food, the most delightful group of people known to human kind, and chocolate. Lots of chocolate. 

 

 

After a not-long-enough day and a half in Maine visiting with Mignon and Forrest, Will and I had to head back to New York so he could play a gig Saturday evening, but on the way back we made the obligatory stop at the Fruition chocolate outpost in the bustling little town of Woodstock, NY. We chatted with the resident chocolatier, munched on some roasted cacao beans, and perused the selection. Although I spent about $100 on great chocolate to bring back with me to Texas, I wasted no time in sharing these little gems with Will.

It's quite likely that soon the four of us will be living in four different states, spread from one end of this continent to the other. From here on out, with jobs, friends, obligations, and eventually houses, spouses, children, and other delightful complications, it will only get harder to get us all in the same place, but I find immense comfort in knowing that wherever, and whenever that is, magic will happen, and my spirit and faith in humanity will be renewed.


Item: Extra Virgin Olive Oil and Sourdough Truffles

Made By: Fruition Chocolate
Made In: Shokan, NY
Purchased At: Fruition Chocolate - Woodstock, NY
Purchase Price: (They don't have this on the website - will call for this later).

Review: With sourdough crumbs from the lovely local Bread Alone Bakery & Cafe, this delightful creation is a child of the Hudson Valley. The outside is crackly and intriguing, with the barest hint of tangy, salty sourdough. The inside is all smooth, powerful cocoa flavor, with a clean, slick barely-there olive-oil finish. The interior of the truffle is just a little sweeter than I generally prefer, but is nicely offset by the sourdough crumbs on the outside. Very well crafted, unusual truffle, with major bonus points for creative flavors. Don't come to this one for dessert. 

Highly recommend