Have a hankering for chocolate from small, artisan producers? Check out the Chocolate & Candy category on Foodzie, a website that describes itself as “an online marketplace where you can discover and buy food directly from small passionate food producers and growers.” It works like this: browse an assortment of chocolates from chocolatiers across the U.S., place the chocolates you want in your shopping cart, check out, and your goodies ship directly from the producers. Convenient, local, and fresh, what more could a gourmet chocolate lover want?
Chocolate research
PHD Comics has a cute comic titled “Research Topics Guaranteed To Be Picked Up By the News Media.” Any guess as to the first topic? Chocolate, of course! According to the comic, “Anything that validates the public’s wishful thinking that chocolate is secretly good for you is news gold.”
A year’s supply of chocolate! June 23, 2009
How’s this for an incentive? Endangered Species Chocolate is conducting an online survey, and the incentive for participating is an entry into a drawing for a year’s supply of chocolate.That’s right, a year’s supply! Just the thought makes me drool.
So what qualifies as a year’s supply of chocolate? Per the fine print:
“The winner of the Grand Prize will be awarded seventy two (72) chocolate bars at one time, one shipment. (ARV: $279.00) (Guaranteed “Enjoy by date” of 12 months). The shipment will consist of twelve (12) bars of the following flavors, Supreme Dark Chocolate, Extreme Dark Chocolate, Smooth Milk Chocolate, Dark Chocolate with Mint, Dark Chocolate with Cranberries and Almonds, and Dark Chocolate with Hazelnut Toffee.”
Depending on your level of chocolate consumption, that may or may not be a year’s supply, but it’s certainly a start. If you’re interested, click here to take the survey. The deadline for entry into the sweepstakes is July 31, 2009.
Chocolate postage stamps June 9, 2009
Know how long chocolate has been in France? Four hundred years! To commemorate the 400th anniversary of the arrival of cacao, the French government recently issued postage stamps that look and smell like chocolate. Wonder if you have to scratch them to release the scent?
Trader Joe’s Swiss Milk Chocolate with 30% Whole Hazelnuts June 2, 2009
Is there such a thing as crunchy Nutella? You know, like crunchy peanut butter, but with Nutella and hazelnuts? If there isn’t, there should be. I bet it’d fly off the shelves.
Until then, here’s a substitute: Trader Joe’s Swiss Milk Chocolate with 30% Whole Hazelnuts. The milk chocolate is so smooth and the hazelnuts are so tasty it’s like eating crunchy Nutella. Seriously! If you’re a Nutella fan, you have got to try this and tell me if it isn’t so. And bonus—it’s more portable than Nutella because it doesn’t come in a jar.
Granted, $3.99 for a 7 oz. bar isn’t cheap. And those 7 ounces don’t go nearly as far as one might hope. I mean, the bar looks big enough, but with all that milk chocolate and hazelnut swirling around in your mouth it disappears fast. Really fast. Like one sitting fast. But then again that might just be me. I’m addicted to Nutella.
Trader Joe’s Fair Trade Swiss Milk Chocolate May 11, 2009
Yesterday I discovered a new chocolate bar at Trader Joe’s: Fair Trade Swiss Milk Chocolate. It’s a good sized bar (3.5 oz) for only $1.99. Plus, it’s Fair Trade! According to the wrapper, “Fair Trade chocolate helps contribute to a better way of life for farmers and their families. This method of buying cocoa beans and sugar offers small-scale growers a fair price for their harvest.”
So how does it taste? Quite nice, actually! The chocolate is extremely smooth, and it has a hint of caramel, which adds to the overall aroma. The ingredients are pure and simple: “cane sugar, cocoa butter, whole milk powder, cocoa mass, carmelized sugar, soy lecithin, vanilla extract”. Definitely worth a try next time you’re at Trader Joe’s!
Free chocolate from Mars May 8, 2009
No, NASA hasn’t discovered that mars is made of chocolate. (What a discovery that would be!) Instead, it’s free chocolate from Mars, Inc., the company that brings us M&Ms, Snickers, Twix, Three Musketeers, Milky Way, and Dove.
Through September 2009, Mars is offering coupons for free chocolate each Friday. To receive a coupon, visit www.realchocolate.com on a Friday and register with your e-mail address and mailing address. If you’re one of the first 250,000 registrants that Friday, Mars will send you a coupon in the mail.
