You're not even going to mention that I've been talking up Bittersweet, and the chocolates one can get there, for well over a year, are you?
Anyway, the Classic is the best hot chocolate there.
There was a great article on gourmet chocolates in the New Yorker a few months back. Makes my mouth water just thinking about it.
The hot chocolates at Vosges are magnificent.
Is there a less pleasant word to describe pleasantness than "yummy?"
What are you, crazy? Give up "yummy" and you give up "yummy in my tummy."
I can hardly believe it myself, ogged, but there are people—otherwise normal-seeming people—who dislike both "yummy" and "tummy". In fact one of them threatened no longer to be friends with me after I said "yummy" and "tummy" in the same sentence.
1,2,6,7: Right now, I wish Unfogged wasn't objectively anti-sexist. I'm left at a loss.
I don't actually understand 8, but "chickie" offers some evidence to the contrary. Unless she calls him "boy-o," I suppose.
"Yummy in the tummy" is for, like, eggplant parmesan. Chocolate calls for "yummy on the tongue" or perhaps "delicious" or "amazing" -- nothing to do with the tummy.
I'm not really sure what 1, 2, 6, and 7 all have in common, other than the property of having been written by either me or ogged.
I believe SCMT is bemoaning the social atmosphere which makes it disfavored for him to impugn your and ogged's masculinity, presumably because chocolate and the word 'yummy' are both unmanly.
We just need w-lfs-n or ogged to say ack or stick their tongues out, and it'll be just like a Cathy cartoon in here.
Something like that?
Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip! Yip!
12: See, LB gets me, even the cold dark places you don't want to talk about at parties.
13 continues to be funny after a reread or two.
Thanks, you fuckers. Now I've got that goddamn song in my head. You know, the one with three "yummies" and a "tummy" in the first line.
18: Such a great show. I kind of want to hate Fey--didn't like her on SNL, kind of suspect her "I'll say I voted for Obama but really vote for McCain" joke reflects her actual politics--but she has a big and genuine talent.
20: Those are her politics -- read the New Yorker profile from a couple of years ago. She lives in fear of the islamojihadirican threat (to steal tbogg's phrase). Granted, Mystery Anthrax Guy did mail spores to 30 Rock, and it seems to have really gotten to her.
I'm glad to see this "European" hot chocolate spreading out in the US. There's a place that sells it in Philadelphia for a year and a half or so. My European wife was aghast at what was called "hot chocolate" (coco, essentially) in the US. Still, the stuff you can buy in even a provincial Russian city is better than what you can get at the fancy chocolate place in Philadelphia, which is in turn better than most of the other options.
For New Bedford-based lovers of any kind of food at all, I can once again confirm that Sid Wainer is fucking awesome.
I can now further reveal that Kyler's seafood is also fucking awesome.
The rest of you poor, non-New Bedford-based bastards will be pleased to note that both those establishments will ship to you at vastly inflated prices, at least compared to the New Bedford retail locations.
I suppose I should try to find it before I talk about it, but did anyone else read that blog post -- don't know the blog -- that utterly exposed "the most expensive chocolate in the world" (sold at Neiman Marcus, etc.) as a fraud? They were simply making the bars themselves, not the chocolate as they'd implied. One can buy bars from the folks whose chocolate they were buying for something like a tenth of the price.
Also in SF and worth a visit is the hot chocolate bar at Cocoa Bella in the Westfield Shopping Center. They also have spicy hot chocolate which I HIGHLY recommend. I haven't tried Bittersweet yet but I aim to rectify that as soon as I get back to SF. Oh, delicious chocolately goodness....
BTW, drinks last night with writer friends - I fear this will be a bleak, bleak, bleak staffing season.
America lacks cocoa plantations, and thus cannot copete with Switzerland in the chocolate business. I don't see that we need to feel bad about this. It's just comparative advantage. There's not Swiss Britney Spears, either, and Britney is a lot more important than "chocolate".
In re 24. Aha. It was NoKa chocolate. Here is the terrific exposé.
I've been making hot chocolate at home by, well, melting a bar of chocolate, adding a bit of milk, and frothing the fuck out of it with my awesome awesome Aerolatte. I often add cinnamon, vanilla, even a bit of cumin sometimes, but should I pour in a small amount of rosewater? I'm a little nervous about the idea.
They also have spicy hot chocolate which I HIGHLY recommend.
Have you tried the Dagoba Xocolatl hot chocolate? Also spicy, also awesome.
I just can't get into the melty chocolate type of hot chocolate. I like hot chocolate that tastes creamy (as opposed to buttery, I guess), which I think is better achieved by cocoa powder in high-fat milk.
If it's a "European" way to make hot chocolate, it must be not have reached culinary hinterlands of Berlin yet... but the four hot chocolate types here are stellar.
I suppose I should try to find it before I talk about it, but did anyone else read that blog post -- don't know the blog -- that utterly exposed "the most expensive chocolate in the world" (sold at Neiman Marcus, etc.) as a fraud? They were simply making the bars themselves, not the chocolate as they'd implied. One can buy bars from the folks whose chocolate they were buying for something like a tenth of the price.
I've read that! Totally great.
I like both hot chocolate and hot cocoa. Both can be excellent (or crummy) in their own ways.
the Dagoba Xocolatl hot chocolate
A friend of mine gave me this for my last apartment's housewarming. The morning after the housewarming party, I used it to make mochas. BAD CALL. It's still in my cupboard and I'm afraid of it.
both hot chocolate and hot cocoa
Aha! Good distinction.
I haven't had the Dagoba hot chocolate, but the regular eating Dagoba is excellent, and it's all organic and fair trade-y.
M/M/ and I did an extensive taste test of groovy (and some non-groovy) chocolate, and this was our favorite.
Warning: The descriptions include words like "terroir."
My wife's taste for chocolate is highly developed, and she consumes stuff that has to be flown in using boxes full of cold-packs. I, on the other hand, am happy to subsist on the chocolate equivalent of crack.
happy to subsist on the chocolate equivalent of crack.
Yeah, for better or worse, I'm also not a chocolate afficionado, so it all looks like so much matter for curiosity to me.
Fassbender & Rausch also sells a tasty ginger liqueur.
Gonerill and parsimon are enablers for this sort of travesty.
ginger liqueur
A Berlin specialty! Though I didn't know they had it there at F&R.
For New Bedford-based lovers of any kind of food at all, I can once again confirm that Sid Wainer is fucking awesome.
This is the God's-honest-truth, as the two logs of chocolate chevre in my fridge will attest.
38: I really loved Ice Cubes as a kid. They were very melty.
38: Remember this when next we discuss the state of lentils in this country.
Gonerill and parsimon are enablers for this sort of travesty.
Meanwhile the aficionados are all about sourcing their single-plantation micro-brands, hand-picked for you in Venezuela by the 10 year-old indentured laborer of your choice.
Don't be ridiculous, Gonerill. By the time an indentured laborer is ten, her hands will be much too coarsened by work to be able to pick the pods without damaging the flavor detectably. The best chocolate comes from plantations that employ five- to seven-year-olds.
43: Is this true???
Someone should send me some Radiohead. I have nearly none. Finances are strained. I know you people have this at your disposal.
Parsimon, try here.
I didn't let dial-up stop me from downloading music. To tell you the truth, it was a little more fun then, because you couldn't get everything you though of immediately.
I would set up a dozen things to download overnight and see what I got in the morning.
Parsimon, send me your address and I will send you some Radiohead (and tell me what you already have).
My wife's taste for chocolate is highly developed
Speaking of chocolate tastiness, I can't decide whether to be chagrined or proud that I presented last night's dinner guests with a scrumptious chocolate chocolate-chip cake that was, unfortunately, very odd to look at. I realized midway through the recipe that I didn't have a bundt pan or tube pan, and had to improvise with two upside-down custard cups in the middle of a 8" round pan. It kind of worked.
Oh well. At least the pudding turned out well.
48: I haven't had a chance to upload the picture yet, but I can top that by a mile.
Re: 49, NB: a lateral mile, not a vertical mile.
Sure was scrumptious though.
46, 47: Thanks, thanks! Old-fashioned as I am.
49: God, I hate Flickr.
But now you can view the cake disaster to end most cake disasters in the Unfogged pool.
Whoa, dude, Sir K, you are ambitious. A six-layer cake?! I hope your brother was suitably grateful. Any cake that takes that much labor and tastes good is worth a great big thank-you, even if it doesn't look like the pretty picture.
Added bonus: one of the photos also shows SK's vintage stand mixer that I mentioned in one of my numerous scintillating comments yesterday.
My brother did appreciate the cake, as well as the homemade hazelnut ice cream.
The layers really would have been pretty easy had I 1) remembered to re-grease and flour the pans after baking the first set of layers and 2) been using frosting with a different consistency. Live & learn & etc.
You discussed my stand mixer? Now everyone will know I'm white.
Actually, M/tch made an effort to distinguish your m/xer from those of other white people. But now we know the truth, whitey.
As a sufferer of cholera* at the moment, having been totally unable to eat anything more substantial than plain lowfat yogurt for a week now, this loose talk of delicious chocolate and eggplant parmigiana is painful.
Why can it not be a swimming post when I am totally unable to eat?! Chlorine isn't tasty at all. I am bitter in my deprivation and emerge from my lurker hovel to grimace in envy.
I'm going to investigate this whole notion of French and Belgian people making hot chocolate with water and not milk. It seems strange. Time to conduct a poll on my French friends.
* I suppose it's remotely possible it's not actually cholera.
No worries, Kraab; M/tch made sure we knew that your stand mixer was more *authentic* than ours.
well, it was a beautiful day in SF, really like summer
i did not know about the place, bought girardheli choco for my coworkers
i'm kinda relieved that my attempt to meet unfogged people failed, short notice of course, coz it was like the last minute decision to let you know etc
i really don't speak english well enough to talk with people and strangers, what would we talk about really, just unimaginable
but my CA trip was a success overall, beautiful sunsets, one thing accomplished before summer
read, you make me smile. SF is a beautiful place indeed.