Key Lime pie?

Dear Foodies,

I am off for parts unknown! Ms. Foodie and her little baby will be heading to the heaving metropolis of Orlando, then along the coast of Florida for a week of well deserved R&R. I had hoped to post a culinary story before my departure, but my organizational skills are not what they could be, so this evening I was forced to do packing instead of writing (boo hoo!)

Upon my return I shall regale you with tales of the fine Floridian food items (conch fritters! key lime pie! stale potato chips!) I will undoubtedly enjoy on my trip.

Hope you enjoy the pallid Ottawa sun!

Belgian Chocolates

A plate full of joy

Like everybody in the world, I love chocolate. Like every foodie in the world, I only eat the best!

I grew up eating those junky chocolate bars (more aptly called "candy bars" for the limited amount of real cocoa in them) from the corner store. Oh sure, they were tasty, but when I grew up and discovered there were chocolate bars out there with real chocolate in them, well, needless to say, I started turning my nose up at Mr. Big and his girlfriend Sweet Marie.

"Artisan chocolate" as these better quality bars are sometimes called, have less sugar and fewer fillers in them than the candy bars of my youth. What they lack in soy lecithin, glycerol, calcium chloride and modified palm oil, they make up for with...now, what's it called again? Oh yes, cocoa!

My favourite gourmet chocolate bars are those that have exotic flavours in them. Dolfin of Belgium makes very cool bars with cinnamon, pink peppercorns, and even Earl Grey tea! My favourite is - hold your breath - masala!

Hello gorgeous!

Needless to say, these exotic flavours are not available at your local convenience store, so when I left work for maternity leave, and left behind the gourmet food emporium which was my cafeteria, I was a bit concerned. Where would I get my chocolate fix now?

I visited those old chocolate standbys, Godiva, Laura Secord, and even Louise's Belgian Chocolates in Bell's Corners. Yet somehow, none of these chocolates satisfied me. They were too sweet, sometimes stale, and the fillings were all so banal. And Lindt chocolate, that gourmet Swiss chocolate company which has expanded wildly and become a staple in every North American retail outlet, has never been a favourite of mine.

To my surprise, a most unlikely source came to my rescue - Shopper's Drug Mart! As you may know, a shiny new Shopper's recently opened up right next to the Coliseum Movie Theatre. I visited it last spring shortly after its opening, and ogled the enticing sale items: canisters of Easter eggs for super cheap, picture frames, plush toys, baby bibs (they have a wonderful baby section!), scarlet nail polish, chips, hairspray... all the staples of a well stocked drug store (on a side note, I made a trip there once with a visitor from India. He was shocked to see all the grocery and beauty items. Apparently, in India, drug stores only sell pharmaceuticals. Now what's the point of that?!)

As I have mentioned before, I visit Shopper's regularly for their extensive grocery section. Well, it turns out they have a superlative chocolate selection too! At Christmas the place really exploded with chocolate. They had the usual drugstore offerings - Whitman's, Hershey's (which taste like sand, in my opinion), Ganong, Pot of Gold...and then I saw a sweetly wrapped package of truffles that looked different.

The chocolates were, variously, white, dark and milk chocolate, and each one was prettily decorated: one with a red poinsettia, the other with ribbon and a bow like a Christmas present; one had a little pine tree on it, the other a snowflake. Le Chocolat was the name of the brand, and the box said they were premium Belgian chocolate. Well, I thought, nothing ventured, nothing gained. I went home and cracked them open. Ooh, was this ever a gain! The fillings were fresh - both flavour-wise and quality-wise. Brownies, ganache, coffee, toffee, marzipan and pralines, maraschino and florentines - these chocolates had them all! Dear reader, I intended to save them for my upcoming Christmas party because they didn't have any more at the store but....well, you know how these things happen!

I enjoyed them. I enjoyed them very much. And the best part was how nicely they were decorated! I went back and tried some of their other offerings - chocolate bars with two flavours (white & milk with strawberries, caramel with caramel cups and toffee chips) and liked all of them. At Valentine's the chocolates had heart and pink & white themes. I can't wait to see what they do for Easter!

Egyptian hieroglyph for happiness: a woman eating chocolate

And as for the guests at my Christmas party, who didn't get to eat those nicely decorated chocolates? Well, don't weep for them, dear reader. I went back to Shoppers the day before my party (not safe to keep chocolates in my house any longer than that!) and got a perfectly good ballotin of Shopper's Drug Mart Belgian chocolates. They weren't as pretty as the others, but they were fresh and delicious, which just goes to show what I said all along. Shopper's Drug Mart is a great place to go for chocolates!

Now, let me go raid my cupboard and see if any of the chocos from these pictures are still around...hm...

Keep on munching!