{"id":648,"date":"2014-01-21T10:02:38","date_gmt":"2014-01-21T17:02:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/?p=648"},"modified":"2014-01-21T10:05:13","modified_gmt":"2014-01-21T17:05:13","slug":"chocolate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/archives\/648","title":{"rendered":"CHOCOLATE"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/?attachment_id=649\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-649\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignleft size-medium wp-image-649\" alt=\"photo 2\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo-2-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo-2-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo-2-1024x764.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo-2.jpg 1296w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\"><em>CHOCOLATE<\/em><\/span><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I once made the mistake, when speaking to a French friend, of calling chocolate \u201cjunk food.\u201d You\u2019d have forgiven me at the time, I\u2019m sure, as I was referring to the thick tablets of chocolate pasted on the top of baby teething biscuits I found in the department store in a small town (Aix-les-bains), where I was camped out with my two girls for several months back in the nineties. You\u2019d have forgiven me, but my friend didn\u2019t, and of course I have since seen the light: I\u2019d been poisoned by North American trends to not realize chocolate is actually one of the basic food groups.<\/p>\n<p>So when I learned recently that an old college buddy of mine had just embarked on a \u201cbean-to-bar dark chocolate\u201d operation in Minnesota, I promptly ordered a selection of his product\u2014made from cocoa beans grown in Belize, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Nicaragua. The\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.meadowlandschocolate.com\">Meadowlands Chocolate <\/a>bars\u00a0arrived in my rural mailbox yesterday, and so this morning\u2014before sullying my taste buds with my usual breakfast of oranges and yogurt\u2014I tested them.<\/p>\n<p>Unbelievable! This chocolate is the real stuff. The wrapping on each bar bears a description\u2014like a wine bottle\u2014of the influences and flavors to be found within, using words such as <i>dark, earthy, rich, nutty, hints of rum, spice, mango, subtle wood aroma.<\/i>\u00a0Not fancy filled candies for delicate fingers, these bars are something to sink your teeth into. The winner for me (today at least, though I will change my mind as soon as I\u2019ve consumed it and can eat the next) is the Belize bar, described thus: <i>Bright, fruity overtones. Hints of sweet vanilla.<\/i><\/p>\n<p>I <em>was<\/em>\u00a0thinking of dieting. You know, after-Christmas bulge needing to be shaved down a bit. But now that I\u2019ve ruined it for today anyway, maybe I should just forget about the yogurt and have another piece of heaven.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/?attachment_id=650\" rel=\"attachment wp-att-650\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-650\" alt=\"photo1\" src=\"http:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo1-300x224.jpg\" width=\"300\" height=\"224\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo1-300x224.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo1-1024x764.jpg 1024w, https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-content\/uploads\/photo1.jpg 1296w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 300px) 100vw, 300px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 CHOCOLATE I once made the mistake, when speaking to a French friend, of calling chocolate \u201cjunk food.\u201d You\u2019d have forgiven me at the time, I\u2019m sure, as I was referring to the thick tablets of chocolate pasted on the top of baby teething biscuits I found in the department store [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=648"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":655,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/648\/revisions\/655"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rolledscroll.com\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}