Reading smashedmotif's journal

Dear Journal,

It would be just my luck that, when arriving home a box of wonderful chocolates would have been left in the sun by the postman.

The chocolates were saved, however, as I placed them in the urgent care unit referred to otherwise as, a freezer.

Much to my pleasant surprise, the box was filled with many luscious chocolates of which many I previously have never heard of or taken. And there is so much chocolate, too!

This entry cannot be closed, nevertheless, without my mentioning of how much I appreciate these chocolates. To be sure, I love chocolate and am very joyous about their arrival.

Thank you, null, for the wonderful box of chocolates and for the opportunity to win them.

I am totally stoked.

自作自受

Glad they arrived, glad you like them, glad they weren't totally melted. :-)

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

Heh... Europe is lucky to have Italy and Switzerland as countries ;) We have some terribly wonderful chocolate down here. Certainly Switzerland chocolate is great; my favorite brand is Lindt & Sprüngli . I think that their quality has decreased a little bit when they decided to buy the Italian Bulgheroni S.p.A though. Here in Italy we constantly try to look for Lindt made in Switzerland, but it is hard. Normally the long bars are, but we can rarely find them. Also, I am a fan of normal chocolate, so I don't really like the new inventions Lindt has made lately (like the chocolate with milk cream inside, or the one with pistachios... blah)

Italy is also well known for its chocolate though. First and foremost I have to mention Caffarel. Lately it has been acquired by Lindt, but it has preserved its own principles in making chocolate, and I think that it is just great, especially the tiny eggs.

The last but not the least... who has never heard of the word Gianduiotto? Don't worry if you haven't, I am not gonna hit your fingers with a stick. However, I can't help but feel sorry for you, because you definitely miss a magnificent piece of Italian chocolate literature :) Here is the link to wikipedia, where they talk about the history of Gianduiotto a little bit. But I also want to post a picture of it here

They also make a liquor out of it, which is the so called Bicerin. I am ashamed to admit that I had never tried it in 23 years of my life. But when we had the chocolate fair here in Turin, Neil and I went from stand to stand to try the chocolate and this liquor, and in the end we bought a bottle of it. It tastes so wonderful. It's like drinking a gianduiotto... it is so thick and yummy...

Un bacio è un'apostrofo rosa scritto tra le parole "ti amo".

And folks, I swear I've never seen her eyes as big as at the chocolate fair. I had to smack her lightly on the hand every now and again to keep her from stealing all the samples.

Just kidding of course, except for the stealing all the samples. You've got to keep an eye on her for that one. ;)

"If I die of a heart attack eating bacon, I'll be a happy man." -My father

except for the stealing all the samples.

I've found that to be a common issue with women whenever there's free stuff available. Food and pencils are the most popular items, but anything will be fine (especially all kinds of vouchers) as long as it's free and can be hoarded.

"*sigh* Some men are really hard to manipulate!" - Orchid

Food and pencils are the most popular items

Well you see if they are free, they are there to be taken. I always think that if I don't take it, then someone else will. Tomorrow I will be going to the book fair, and I am quite sure I will manage to get back home with a lot of free stuff, such as book catalogs, pamphlets, leaflets and things like that. Maybe even some pencils or pens. I really like name pens in fact. Normally people here choose the common "bic" brand, and then they embellish them with their name or the name of their company... I kinda collect them ;)

And by the way, at the chocolate fair there was the Lindt stand that was offering free chocolate... to everybody! We went in and there were two routes to take. One was about milk chocolate, and the other was about dark chocolate (blah). I think that Hawkeye and I made a mistake in starting from the milk side. We then moved to the dark chocolate, and we started from 50% cocoa, which was not bad; then 60%, still good; 65%, hmm could have been better. Then we reached 70%, and at that point I was like "yuuuuck. This stuff is totally unsweetened!" and I gave my piece to Hawkeye. There was still the 80% and 90%, but I didn't even have the courage to take the samples, yuck!

Un bacio è un'apostrofo rosa scritto tra le parole "ti amo".

There was still the 80% and 90%, but I didn't even have the courage to take the samples, yuck!

I think the higher the cocao percentage means the more the chocolate is used for decoration, giving the feeling -- when placed in the kitchen in a conspicuous place -- that the kitchen belongs to a chef. That is, these chocolates are merely for looks and not for eating.

*note: when wanting to select "reply to this post, I somehow clicked on cast vote and have not idea what was cast. That said, I wanted to rate this post as excellent.

自作自受

This post was edited by smashedmotif on May 12, 2007.