Chocolate

For me to not have written anything about chocolate is flat out cuckoo to say the least. Or it's cocoa—you be the judge.

I've always liked the tasty brown stuff. In my childhood, I preferred milk chocolate. At the time, the dark chocolate that was available was Hershey's Special Dark or that horrible Brach's candy-like substance you got when you went out trick-or-treating. And to me none of that was very good. See's was good, but didn't hit the spot as far as I was concerned. I wanted sweet. Apparently my tastes have grown up because these days, I actually prefer dark chocolate, and there are so many different brands out there. There are good and not-so-good dark chocolates, and after tasting a lot of different brands, I've found Ghirardelli and Lindt to be my favorites, especially the bars with the percentage of cocoa in the 75-85% range.

Don't start me on white chocolate. At one time, I really liked it, but for some reason over the years, I've actually lost my taste for it. It's WAAAY too sweet (yes, I meant the three As in "WAAAY"), and, honestly, it's not really chocolate—just a sweet confection with a few characteristics of chocolate, but not the taste.

Then there are the people who tell me, "But you're diabetic and shouldn't be eating chocolate." Those people are full of another kind of brown stuff that I won't discuss here. In moderation, dark chocolate is actually healthy to eat, even for those of us who need to monitor our blood sugar. The idea is "moderation." Not entire bars, but just a few small pieces. Many bars are molded into segments that can be broken off. That makes it easy to ration out a few pieces for a snack. M&Ms come in five or six colors. I just take two of each color and call it done. That's only 10-12 pieces.

But I have to say this: there's nothing like European chocolate. It's just...better. They use premium ingredients and most of the chocolate made there is creamier without any bitter aftertaste. When Diana took her trip to Europe a couple of years ago, she visited Switzerland and brought me back some genuine Swiss chocolate. It just doesn't compare to most of what's made here in the U.S. Sorry, Hershey, Mars... 😩

There have been a few things written about what the future holds for chocolate. Not that they're going to stop making it, but that the world supply of cacao beans is...dwindling. Those beans are the primary ingredient of chocolate. We humans are eating chocolate faster than they can grow more beans to replace what we put in our bellies. Shortage of beans means limited availability and higher prices. (Shortage of anything results in limited availability and high prices, but for the sake of this post, we'll stick to cacao beans.) It's hard to imagine that something we've taken for granted may become a rare and expensive treat. We're going to have to depend on a limited source of beans from overseas unless the U.S. suddenly develops a large crop of cacao beans. And that's unlikely because cacao beans grow primarily in areas close to the equator. Even Hawaii isn't close enough to the equator, though the climate might be right. But they'd have to bump the pineapples...

Regardless of what happens with the world chocolate supply, I'm still going to enjoy it, sparingly if need be.

But stop eating it? NEVER!