I’m catching up on some of my chocolate reviews from the past few months since I’ve been computerless.  Lots to talk about!  A few months back, I was lucky enough to meet up with Sarah Hart, owner of Alma Chocolate in Portland, Oregon while she was visiting Chicago. Turns out we were long lost soul sisters.  Imagine an entire night of talking about chocolate and food!

We had a lovely dinner at The Purple Pig.  Lots of great conversation and lots of pig products that were to die for!  I always appreciate a great waitstaff and our lovely lady treated us to a delicious complimentary dessert.  Not sure what it was called, but she knew we were chocolate people and we weren’t disappointed.  It was a brioche stuffed with chocolate and then fried.  I would have taken a dozen to go, but I didn’t want them to look at me funny…

Sarah was kind enough to bring me a wonderful selection of chocolates from her shop called Alma Chocolate located in Portland, Oregon.  I first found out about Alma Chocolate two years ago when I was working on my Chocolate Travel book.  To me, food is on a spiritual, intellectual and emotional level.  Alma Chocolates drew me in right from the start.  I felt the love and passion brought into the beautiful work coming out of this shop. Ironically, according to Alma Chocolate’s website, Alma means “soul” in Spanish and “to nourish” in Latin.  What makes the name even more special?  Sarah’s grandmother’s name is Alma.  How incredibly wonderful is that?

Alma Chocolate Swallow

Alma Chocolate uses single-origin chocolate and organic ingredients to create their masterpieces. They create iconic solid chocolate works, bon bons, truffles, toffees, barks, sauces and caramels.  Sarah brought me a Swallow made from 100% Venezuelan, single-origin chocolate covered with 23 karat edible gold leaf. I almost couldn’t eat her.  She was so beautiful.  I had visons of a Christmas tree covered in Alma Chocolate icons.  How incredibly would that be?  Perhaps at a holiday party, you can cover your tree in Alma Chocolate icons and guests can bring an ornament to replace the icon your guest decides to take home and enjoy… I digress, as usual.

Alma Chocolate Candied Fruit and Nut Bar

You won’t find any typical English toffees at Alma Chocolate.  Alma’s toffees are as distinct and original as Sara herself.  Her selection includes Pistachio, Ginger Almond, and Oregon Hazelnut and Dried Cherry. The Ginger Almond is deliciously full of contrast with the spiciness of the ginger, the buttery sweetness of the toffee and the delicate crunch of the almonds.

Alma Chocolate Bark

Alma Chocolate’s  barks include Mocha Almond Nibbly Bar and PMS (for the gentlemen too!).  The nibby in the nibby bar?  It’s cocoa nibs!  A nice special treat.  PMS?  Yep.  Over the top and everything you need… candied peanut, milk chocolate (sometimes you just need the sugar) and a bit of salt.  It all balances the flavors out.

The mini bars?  Little bars of heaven!  Pistachio Hazelnut Bar, Salty Nutty Toffee, and Candied Fruit and Nut Bar.  I love pistachios.  They are by far my favorite nut.  I’ve never had pistachio and hazelnuts in the same chocolate bar before and it was an outstanding combination!  Four stars!

Alma Chocolate Bon Bons

Alma Chocolate will blow your mind in the bon bon department!  The flavors are innovative and over-the-top.  How about a Habanero Caramel Crown?  Sabrina (marzipan and fig)? Thai Peanut Butter Cup (ginger, lime, Thai chile and red volcanic sea salt)? Smoky Joe Truffle ( smoked paprika)?  See what I mean?  To see a fulll ist of what Alma offer in the way of bon bons and truffles… click here.

Alma Chocolate Caramel Sauces

Don’t care for chocolate?  Gasp!  Alma makes a fabulous caramel to top your ice cream or pies off.  I’d like to try it on some buttered toast myself.  Something for everyone – lavender, habanero or rosewater.

Thanks for coming to visit me Sarah!  My taste buds and tummy thank you for your gift bag full of chocolatey goodness.  I’m still smiling… You may purchase Alma Chocolate at their store, online, or at any of their other stockists including Cork – A Bottle Shop on 2901 NE Alberta Street and 1715 NW Lovejoy Street, and at the Portland Farmer’s Market.

Have a great day and don’t forget your daily dark chocolate!

Annmarie Kostyk

Well, I finally bit the bullet and purchased myself a new laptop since my last computer went to the big computer heaven in the sky a few months back.  I have to say that the computer’s blank page has been staring at me and laughing.  I seem to have something called writers block, but I wanted to let you know that I’m still here consuming mass quantities of chocolate.  Lots of reviews will be flowing onto my pages in no time.

The biggest form of flattery is pulling ideas from someone’s work, or in the following case, someone’s work in its entirety…which I do do on occasion noting them, of course.  I found this article on Facebook today and I couldn’t believe it.  I knew, had heard rumors, that there were those that were not fond of chocolate, but not of any that couldn’t stand chocolate.  It’s a great, honest, short read that I think you’ll love.  I’ll be back later on this week with some recipes, reviews and a few other tidbits.  I missed you all!

Annmarie Kostyk

Until my new graphics are done…ignore the caption.

Confessions of a Chocolate Hater

I know it’s weird, but it’s more socially awkward than you realize

by Lila Byock May 14, 2011 (from Gilt Taste)

It was widely known among the students of Paxson Elementary that you could get free ice cream by walking half a block to the Dairy Queen and requesting a “mistake”—the bungled orders set aside for cheapskates. Beggars can’t be choosers, as the saying goes, and given that my allowance was earmarked for Belinda Carlisle tapes and jelly shoes, I didn’t flinch at those misshapen Dilly Bars, with their soft-serve goiters and brittle exoskeletons of chocolate. Looking back, I can only conclude that the cacao content of DQ’s chocolate coating is roughly equivalent to the scotch content of their butterscotch dip. You see, there is no easy way to say this: I hate chocolate.

I wish I had some easy explanation—a fingernail once unearthed inside a Fudgsicle, say—but the truth is I’ve always been like this. My sister (the beneficiary of my trick-or-treating bounty) used to introduce me to friends by saying, “This is Lila. She doesn’t like chocolate. She’s weird.” (Ingrate.) I was already something of an oddity, growing up in Montana, by virtue of my unpronounceable name, my Jewish/Hispanic ancestry, my freckles. But I never felt more isolated than I did on those afternoons when I was the only kid without a cupcake at a classmate’s birthday party. I possessed an invisible deficiency, like colorblindness, and it seemed to symbolize all the ways I failed to fit in.

It’s heresy, I know. A dislike of chocolate is strange to the point of suspicion (as I’ve been informed on many, many occasions). Fro-yo may boom and cupcakes may bust, but chocolate is the gold standard of the dessert economy. It’s the Type O of confections, the universal pleasure donor, ubiquitous at Valentine’s Day, Halloween and Easter, birthday parties, weddings and wakes. It lounges seductively on your hotel pillow when you turn in for the night. According to a Hofstra University survey, only two percent of respondents acknowledged disliking chocolate, and among women that figure was zero. Zero percent of women dislike chocolate. Apparently I don’t even count. But I can count, and, for example, I recently counted 1,048 Facebook groups called, simply, “Chocolate.” That does not include “People Who Hate Chocolate Are Obviously Aliens” (35 members) and “Don’t You Hate People Who Hate Chocolate?!?!” (446 members).

So you can see why I try to keep my condition to myself, locked away in the same mind-vault where I store my revulsion toward earthworms, and Ray Liotta. I worry that people will think it’s an affectation, or just an obnoxious fat-phobia. But chocolate’s omnipresence means I can hardly get through a week without stumbling into the Chocolate Discussion. When I’m forced to confess my aversion, often at the close of some lovely dinner party where the host has toiled over a complicated soufflé or torte, the disclosure is inevitably tainted with rejection.

“That looks incredible, but I couldn’t possibly,” I’ll say, waving off the dish and the accompanying chocolate odor. When the host insists, or offers a disbelieving stare, I sigh, knowing I’m about to steer the conversation right off the rails. “The truth is, I’m really not a chocolate person.” And then I shrug, like, Weird, right? Better to be thought aberrant than impolite. By now, though, there’s no avoiding the Discussion:

Are you allergic? Nope, just don’t like the taste.

Just dark chocolate or milk too?  Categorically, I can’t stand the stuff.*

You must not have much of a sweet tooth. On the contrary, I could subsist happily on a diet of strawberry shortcake and apple pandowdy.

Then you don’t like things that are bitter? The bitterer the betterer. My favorite beers are ultra-hoppy IPAs and my preferred comic mode is acerbic.

Wait, really? How can you not like chocolate? You know those times when everyone’s really excited about some band and then you listen to the album and even though you’re hearing the same thing as everyone else you Just Don’t Get It? (Cough, Radiohead.) I think I taste all the flavors in chocolate that you taste, but to me they don’t add up to a harmonious sum. It’s just sort of… brown. With an aftertaste of alienation.

Are you an American, even? I get this one a lot. Given that chocolate was discovered by Mayans, perfected (so I hear) by Europeans, and is generally imported from Africa, I have never understood the logic. But if you must know, my long-form birth certificate is on file with the State of California.

Next time the topic arises, though, I’ll have a new line of defense. Not long ago, I read a 2007 paper in the Journal of Proteome Research (yep, that’s how I roll) that may explain the existence of freaks like me.

Swiss and British scientists from, um, the Nestlé Research Center conducted a study of men who identified as “chocolate-desiring” and men who identified as “chocolate-indifferent.” (Women were excluded “to avoid the confounding effects of hormonal fluctuations.”) After a week’s worth of blood and urine tests, the researchers determined that the two groups exhibited distinctly different “metabonomes” and “gut microflora,” regardless of whether they had eaten chocolate or a placebo** during the study—the scientists could theoretically determine who was or wasn’t a chocoholic just by examining things like lipid, niacin and citrate levels. What this means, according to the researcher who led the study, is that it’s not my fault; a love of chocolate (or lack thereof) is “imprinted into our metabolic system.” Palate is just the con game your intestinal bacteria pull on your taste buds. Evidently you can account for taste, so long as you’re willing to submit your bodily fluids to the scrutiny of a bunch of Europeans in lab coats.

Nearly two hundred years ago, Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin observed that habitual chocolate users are “least liable to a multitude of illnesses which spoil the enjoyment of life.” If that’s a fact, then perhaps one day some Nestlé scientist will invent a pill to treat my malfunctioning metabonomes and microflora. (And perhaps we’ll have universal health care to pay for it.) Until then, thank you so much for dinner. Your ganache looks spectacular, but I couldn’t possibly.

* Let’s all just agree, once and for all, that white chocolate is no more a cousin to chocolate than David Lee Roth is to Philip.

** What’s a placebo for chocolate, you ask? The answer, apparently, is bread.