Chocolate

I live in Switzerland. This probably means I should have a lot of opinions, experiences of and suggestions for chocolate. I do like chocolate. In cakes and tortes. In solid bars or spheres. In liquid form.

I have vivid memories of my favorite chocolates.

When I was in Germany in my junior year of high school, the Ritter Sport square bars and Lindt milk chocolates made up a significant part of my diet, which was the opposite of a diet, since I gained my first freshman 15 that year. The food at my school just wasn't as comforting as this stuff.

Then there was the three color chocolate mousse and truffle cake at a sadly long-departed Le Bistro restaurant in Tucson. They would serve you a slice of this thing, only about 3/4 in thick, and at first you'd think you'd been overcharged for dessert. Until you tasted it, had the dark truffle part coat your tongue like velvet, gone to paradise, and then couldn't finish the last 1/4 because of how rich it was.

And in another long-gone restaurant named Spring, in Chicago, there was this after dinner hot chocolate shot that was more like drinking a.... Actually, I have no words for this one. It was light in color, warm, and I think there may have been some thyme in it. It felt like almost nothing going down your throat because it was so smooth but thick - not quite liquid, softer than a pudding. It was glorious. And M and I had hot chocolate served late night at our wedding, at best as a tribute to this drink, because I'm thinking it was only ever meant to exist for a few years in this universe and I was lucky enough to stumble upon it. Never to meet it again.

I remember and search for good chocolate like I do a book or movie.

Now I live in Switzerland. There are large company chocolatiers downtown: Sprungli (the no-export part of the Lindt empire), Teuscher (whose shop windows would give Willy Wonka visual overload), and Laderach (my favorite). There are smaller places, too, like in our village where one of their specialties is, not too appetizingly to me for a gourmet item, chocolate prunes. But I'll have to give it a try some day.

I like my chocolate dark, mostly. Around 60%. And here is what graces our cupboards when they are full of my favorites:

1. Caotina dark chocolate cocoa powder, for mornings when I'm planning to nap after A and M leave

2. Lindt dark truffle bar, from the COOP grocery store, it is the best thing I've found for straight up, eat it plain, dark (no point in getting anything else from Lindt for me). It is sort of the more chocolate, less truffle version of those black wrapper Lindt balls you get in the US.

3. The dark chocolate "bark" from Laderach. This is made in sheets and broken into pieces. The Florentiner has almonds in crunchy caramel. This will always do very very nicely, especially for a gift. Their other barks have all sorts of nuts, or chili, or fruits in them. They have a milk chocolate. You always see tourists stop and salivate at the window before they go in to buy some. We discovered it the day I went into labor.

4. Ritter Sport dark with marzipan, milk with biscuit or milk with corn flakes. We're getting a little less classy now. But these have, on a few occasions, been my lunch when I'm running late to get A from daycare. And they were fine lunches, I remember with fondness.

5. Currently, crispy M&Ms. Yup, we're talking vending machine choices here. I like them chilled in the fridge. Mostly the crispy part is what I find addictive to crunch and it will force me through a whole big bag in a few days. I'm not too proud to admit that. I am a bit upset, though, that there are no plain M&Ms here, because I think they would have been a better option. They only have the crispy or the peanut.

6. Schoggi gipfeli. Swiss German way of saying chocolate croissant. Croissant, filled with chocolate. How can this be a bad thing for all the bakeries to carry? I can't think of any way.

And there you have it. My list.