Unsuspecting. . .

you bite into an innocent looking piece of fudge and to your surprise and wonder discover that it's no ordinary fudge. It's pumpkin spice fudge. Yep. Made with pumpkin and spices. The original recipe called not for chocolate but white chocolate chips. Now why would I have any of those on hand? sheesh. So I was forced to improvise with semi-sweet and therefore it makes the blog!

Yum.

I saw the recipe posted on a local homeschool yahoo group

Lenny The Moose

Most recently my mom and I and my youngest kids drove up to Maine to visit friends and eat lobster- not that you care. . . Because we not only ate chocolate, but also paid tribute to it. Meet Lenny the Chocolate Moose:

The 1700 lb milk chocolate statue was made in 1997, can't believe he's lasted so long. Later they added the dark chocolate bears. The pond is white chocolate with food coloring added.

I went a little crazy and bought two much smaller chocolate 'mouse' and a couple of boxes of mixed chocolates. It was fun and delicious.

The milk chocolate mouse I broke up for all the kids to share. [Mine and my friend's] And the dark chocolate look-a-like was saved for grown-ups and red wine. yum. Smoother than I expected. So that was a good find. They also had ice cream, other candies and souvenirs.

Keeping to just a little nibble a day is going to be hard.

Karma is Chocolate

Continuing on with our anniversary story, this one has a moral to it. When it's your anniversary, boast. It really pays off. We stayed at the Ritz Carlton for the night and I noted on the breakfast order form that we were celebrating our 27th anniv. [the little door hanger you can leave outside your door and breakfast magically appears the next day, love it] It has a comment section for a reason, I figured.

Low and behold, not only did our yummy and too big breakfast arrive, but so did this luscious yummy chocolate dessert pictured above. Now, wasn't mommy right all those years to serve chocolate cake for breakfast?? I've been vindicated. This also proves that Chocolate is always the perfect gift. :)

Now that wasn't the only advantage to speaking up. . . We celebrated our anniversary at the Old Hickory Steakhouse, which is divine in itself. And they certainly knew what we were celebrating. But I did flirtatiously complain that for my birthday I couldn't EAT chocolate, because the only chocolate thing on their menu that day had, *gasp*, hazelnut in it. And I wouldn't eat in on principle. The waitstaff told me not to worry- they would find something. And they did. Not on the menu. . . Chocolate, dark, mousse, ganache, layers. . . Too bad I didn't take a photo.

So again, the moral of the story; be friendly, but speak up and chocolate will find you.

More with bacon

For part of our anniversary celebration we had a wonderful lunch at Rosa Mexicano. For dessert, I couldn't resist trying the chocolate ice cream with 'candied bacon.' It was a limited edition flavor as part of their ice cream festival:

Helado de Chocolate Negra Modelo/ Chocolate Negra Modelo ice cream with salted cajeta and candied bacon.

The ice cream was delicious and had just enough bite. The bacon lent a nice salt to the flavor. It definitely works with chocolate. The only thing I didn't like was the frozen bacon pieces were chewy and limp rather than crisp as when it's in a bar of chocolate. That was a real downer, so I doubt I'd order it again. But it was a nice try.

For my main dish, I also had chocolate:

Mole Xico/ Beef [photo at left]

Two soft corn tortillas [I requested Flour] filled with shredded chipotle beef. Topped with veracruz mole made with raisins, plantains, hazelnuts, pine nuts and ancho and pasilla chiles. Garnished with crema and queso fresco.

Mole is a chocolate sauce, but you wouldn't know it. It was very heavenly. I could eat it every day and never tire of it. It was smooth and rich. I don't normally ingest hazelnut, especially with chocolate, but it worked in this dish; probably because of all the other goodies. This was an excellent mole!

We ALSO ate at La Sandia earlier the same week and I ordered:

CHICKEN MOLE POBLANO pan roasted chicken breast / mole poblano / mexican rice / refried black beans / fried plantains / sesame seeds

It was to die for as well. The best mole I've ever had.

We ordered the sopapillas for dessert, but they were small and crispy. I like mine soft and only lightly golden on the outside. a disappointment- luckily I was pretty stuffed from dinner anyway. [the gauc was the best ever, oops, that's not chocolate, sorry!]

The margaritas at both places were very delicious- with lots of choices, but since they are not about chocolate, I won't mention them here.

Bon appétit! or maybe I should say,

¡buen provecho

You Know You Like It

Chocolate.

And bacon.

Now don't squirm. You dip your bacon in pancake syrup right? You like to eat choc. chip pancakes?

Well, that was the inspiration for this chocolate flavor and it is delicious! I wish I would have posted right away to convey the proper feelings, but it was months ago and I finally got this photo taken:

The other flavor is chili, which I am totally use addicted to already and tend to keep a stash in various hiding places. I did share these 2 bars. It was pretty cool, hanging around at the end of a speech event with the student leaders, passing around the chocolate. . .

Sad days with no chocolate

There hasn't been much to write because sadly, I decided to go on an extreme diet and cut out fat, most sugars and most chocolate! It hasn't been easy with vacations, parties and junk, but some days I've stuck to it really well. [and lost a modest amount of weight too or I'd have ditched the idea!]

Remember I said I was starting to drink more coffee? Well it's really taken off. I even bought a 'real' coffee maker. [no it doesn't grind the beans, but it does have the stainless steal decor!] To go really extreme with my diet, I gave up 'creamers' and have been drinking coffee with just sugar. I have a mild decaf vanilla variety right now, but I think I need to go to a more robust bean and definitely with caffeine as I think it does help me eat less.

This is intended to be a temporary diet- for the summer, while fresh fruits and veggies are easy to find and yummy to eat. Then come fall, when I'm much lighter, I will simply be 'moderate' and 'maintain'. And hopefully, get back to eating and talking about chocolate. Wait, I can talk about it much sooner than that. . . I do have some photos to upload from months ago- so a few more posts are in the wings. . .

Coffee Mocha

Wow, it's been a long time since I posted. Be assured that my life has been filled with Chocolate in the meantime. I actually DID NOT get chocolate out on my birthday, horrors. But I had a good sized stash at home, so it wasn't so bad. [Can you imagine a restaurant NOT having chocolate?] Well, to be honest they DID have a chocolate dish, but it was HAZELNUT, ewwww. So I declined out of principle. [Besides, remember that stash?]

Lately, I've taken to drinking coffee. Candy coffee, of course- almost always with chocolate syrup in it, or some chocolate creamer concoction. I discovered that even with creamer its very little calories* - compared to eating meals, and one cup can last half the day. Nah, it hasn't helped any yet. . . [*not to be confused with a 1000 calorie venti] But I'm still hoping.

My daughter discovered a recipe for peanut butter cup cookies, which when presented with said PB cups, made them for me. They are good and a nice novelty if you need a cookie other than choc. chip, but I doubt I would go through the work, eating PB cups just like they are is satisfying enough, don't you think?