FOUR Perfect Pieces!

You know what totally rocks? When you get an e-mail from your awesome friend who says she sent you a package of fancy chocolates and you'll be getting them tomorrow.

You know what's a total bummer? When your friend writes back and says, "D'oh! I sent them to your old address!"

You know what totally rocks? That your friend is like this (holding two fingers crossed) with the delivery guy, so the package doesn't get sent to the new owners of the old house (who are perfectly nice people, and probably wouldn't eat the chocolate, but really, I wouldn't blame them if they did), and he says the package will be re-routed to the new casa.

You know what else totally rocks? When the delivery dude rings the doorbell just as the Sugar Baby is having a meltdown, stopping him mid-cry. Perfect timing!

So here are the lovely truffles that Kris sent from Jimmie's Chocolates, "Florida's oldest chocolatier." They're a decent-sized truffle; you could easily get three bites out of each one. Last night I tried the one in the upper right. It was raspberry, with a good kick of alcohol. The center was thick and fudgy. Very nice. Kris mentioned that they were pricey (she doesn't have the same chocoholic gene that I have so this whole gourmet chocolate thing was new to her). I checked out the website and hoo boy, she wasn't just whistlin' Dixie. Looks like their truffles average out to over $2 a piece, which frankly seems a bit excessive for an American chocolate company. (Somehow paying that for French, Belgian or German chocolate seems more acceptable.) Thanks Kris! I'll buy you a margarita next time you're here.

And Jimmie's people, if you're reading this, just FYI: there's a typo on your postcard. Eclectic has one "c."

(Did I mention I'm available for copywriting and press releases?)

Anyhow, I'll keep you posted on the rest of the truffles. Yummy, yum, yum!

(And speaking of Florida, the Ice Cube Queen sent me the link to some ritzy glitzy chocolate place out in her neck of Florida, but when I went to open the link, some crazy music started blasting and I didn't want to wake up the Sugar Baby, so I never got to read about it. I'll have to look for that e-mail again. Is Florida becoming the new Chocolate Capital?!)

One Perfect Piece: Perfection Found!

The last piece of the Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate was a Creme Brulee. I'm not a huge fan of real creme brulee to start with, probably because it brings to mind the night we went to a wine dinner and consumed way too much food and wine, capped off by a dessert of-- you guessed it-- creme brulee. The result was having to stop the car on the way home so I could, uh, "revisit" the menu.
So I left that chocolate for last, figuring it'd be the least exciting. Boy, was I wrong. It was fantastic. A snappy dark chocolate cup, with a layer of caramel, a layer of white cream, and a crunchy sugar top. Seriously, I could've eaten an entire box of just these. So sad that there were only two (one for me, one for Mr. Goodbar). This needs to be a candy bar onto itself. Are you listening, Trader Joe? Make it into a big, yummy bar and I'll be forever your number one customer!

One Perfect Piece: Piece, the Third

Okay, so I had a glass or two of wine before I took this picture. I don't even remember what this was, but it was good. I seem to recall that it was crunchy and yummy.

Anyhow, the box of Trader Joe's Dark Chocolates was a big success. They were all really good and I managed to only have one piece a day. Huzzah!

One Perfect Piece, Week 2

I bought a box of dark chocolates from Trader Joe's. I'd tell you what they're called, except the cat is laying on my left arm right now so I can't get up to look at the box. But it says something about "devilishly, dangerously dark chocolate" on the box and there are 12 pieces.

I'm not exactly sure how we've come to associate danger with dark chocolate, but hey, I'm no advertising guru.

The first piece I had, above, is a bourbon vanilla cream. It was good. Perfect? No, but good enough to satisfy. The chocolate had a nice snap to it-- I like snappy chocolate-- and the vanilla was flavorful.

Now here's the problem. There's no way I can have a box of chocolates in the house and eat one a week. I never pretended that I could do that. My original intention was to buy one piece a week, but that didn't work out. So two weeks into my experiment and it's already falling apart. But hey, these are small chocolates. So instead, I'm aiming for one a day.

One Perfect Piece

In an effort to actually try and kick the Baron's butt in the weight loss arena this year, I've decided to try something new. It's called One Perfect Piece. Here's the deal: instead of eating average, normal candy all the time, I'm going to savor one perfect piece once a week. (Well, in this case, it was two, but they were small. So one big piece or two small pieces.)
Here we have a vanilla cream and a coconut cluster from the Newtown Chocolatier. The vanilla cream had a distinct texture-- not too soft and runny, not too stiff. It was almost like buttercream. It was yummy. The coconut was tasty. I've been on such a coconut kick, ever since having the Sugarbaby.
But now I've encountered a problem. Where am I supposed to get One Perfect Piece every week? I didn't stop to consider the fact that there aren't really a ton of chocolate shops around. I suppose I could order some chocolates off the Internet, but the whole purpose of this experiment was to NOT have lots of chocolate in the house. Any ideas?