Saturday, April 15, 2006

NIGHT ON THE PORCH

A friend of mine lives in a wonderful Victorian house with a long and wide front porch. Last night was the first night we could all sit out and enjoy an evening without frostbite or gale force winds.  Such are the vagaries of springtime weather when you live near Lake Michigan.

For almost six hours, their friends and neighbors stopped by to chat and nibble on platters of fresh vegetables, cheese of all kinds, fish salad, prosciutto [I'll check the spelling later] with sliced pears, green and black olives, sweet and spicy sausage, you get the drift. All washed down with a variety of extraordinary wines. Or in my case, Target's house brand diet tea.

In the final hour a plate of sweets and a huge tray of very large strawberries appeared. Along with chocolate to dip them in. 

A discussion of chocolate ensued. Personally, and I'm not ashamed to admit this, I shop at Walgreen's. Regardless of the medicinal value of dark chocolate, I have suddenly developed a taste for the unhealthy milk chocolate version made by Dove. They have huge plastic bags of the stuff in little foil wrapped squares that serve to abate my frequent cravings during the day.

While admitting that Dove doesn't do chocolate too badly, the other people present revealed an encyclopedic knowledge of all things chocolate that left me cowering in a corner. Apparently I was sitting amongst a group of isomer junkies who could 1] discourse on single source availability and their countries of origin  2] confess to past intimacies with every esoteric, out of the way chocolatier in the metropolitan area, and 3] toss off cocoa percentages like mathematicians.

Next time I'm going to steer the conversation to mustard. I can talk honey dijon and spicy horseradish with anyone.



6 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I remember the orignal DOVE BARS (ice cream) I had my first one on the corner of Walgreens on Michigan Ave. I believe it was coconut or coffee. They were square.  Dove chocolates......not bad.  I even like Brachs chocolate Bridge Mix.   Anne

Anonymous said...

Mmmm....Dove is good enough for me.

Anonymous said...

Chocolate covered roasted coffee beans.  Caffeine and chocolate the two most important food groups together in one treat!

Anonymous said...

RAISINETTES are HARDLY la-de=da ,,, but i think you'll be amused by its pretentions.

Anonymous said...

I worked at Godiva for a while after retiring. I prefer Cadbury - especially the British stuff, which I can get in Canada. And do.

xoxo

Anonymous said...

Mmm, chocolate....
I used to keep the dark Dove squares hidden in the fridge, just for me.   I love the Ghirardelli caramel squares, and their almond squares too, for that matter.  And you have to try the giant bar of chocolate from Trader Joes--it's big, but it will break in to little pieces, and it comes in milk (plain), milk w/ almonds, and I think there's a bittersweet one too.

Ahem.  
I always have a stash in the house somewhere.  Mommy's little helpers; because frankly, if my kids are gonna drive me to something, chocolate is the probably the least of all the evils. lol
Anna