Target Chocolate Taste-Test

Chocolate is my Waterloo. I could make serious life-choice mistakes while under the influence of chocolate. So when my local Target began to carry dark chocolate flavored with amazingly exotic flavors, I grew weak in the knees and strong on directional instincts. My car knows the way to Target all by itself. All I have to do is wave an empty Lindt wrapper under it’s nose and it’s off.

Target has a house brand called Choxie. It offers a variety of flavors in light and dark. Being a dark-aholic, I tried the dark Key lime flavor. I also purchased a Lindt dark bar flavored with Orange bits, a dark with chili peppers, and a Frey dark chocolate with lemon and pepper. I really like the flavors of peppers, although I am not a fan of spice so strong that my mouth hurts.

The Choxie Key Lime had an interesting filling–bright taste, which might be limey. Had I not had the bright green package to remind me it was lime, I might have simply thought “sour,” or maybe “lemon.” But the greatest disappointment on this bar is that the chocolate doesn’t taste like dark chocolate. It tastes like white chocolate, which is to say, not like chocolate at all. I remember in the 70s someone told me that carob tasted just like chocolate and was much better for you. I bought a carob bar and thought I’d bitten into the wrapper. Nope, it was the carob, which, to paraphrase Douglas Adams, tastes completely not unlike wet cardboard.

If you are a white chocolate aficionado, my apologies, but white chocolate has less chocolate flavor than the skin tanning coco butter, which it resembles in taste, if not smell. Coco butter tan cream smells more like chocolate. There are a few white chocolate producers who substitute solidified vegetable oil for coco butter in their white chocolate. Makes it easier to work with. Which sums up my interest in white chocolate.

Back to Choxie. For the price, not so bad, if you are not deeply into chocolate. Unfortunately for Choxie, it’s got no Moxie. Not for me.

Lindt is a Swiss chocolate maker for whom I have deep respect. Their dark chocolate is deep, rich, and avoids the pitfalls of many of the darkest chocolates–sour, sharp aftertastes. Their intense Orange is just that–it tastes intensely and unmistakably of real orange–the slightly bitter pulp and the rich, sweet juice. The bar is thin and the orange bits a bit crunchy. At less than $2 a bar, this is worth driving to Target for.

Lindt also makes a dark chocolate with Chili peppers. So far, it’s a clear favorite. The peppers make their presence known as a warm heat on the tongue and palate, balanced by the intensity of dark chocolate. It is absolutely perfectly balanced. Even the picture on the wrapper is wonderful, with a pure red chili pepper against dark chocolate–exactly what to expect.

Frey (the bar tells you to pronounce it “fray”) is another Swiss chocolate maker. I purchased their Lemon/Black pepper bar. How could a pepper love like me resist? I was hoping for a tang of tart lemon, followed by the floral spice of good pepper. It didn’t happen. The dark chocolate was fine, no complaints, but the lemon was simply sour and I still haven’t found any evidence of pepper.

I’m willing to give Frey another chance with another flavor, but so far Lindt is the quality winner. Guess I’ll just have to head over and pick another couple of bars.

–Image: Choxie Key Lime bar and Lindt Intense Orange photograph by Quinn McDonald, who is loving the idea of reviewing chocolate. As she buys wine by the graphic design of the label, she may be better off as the chocolate critic. She also teaches writing, journaling, and is a certified creativity coach. (c) 2008 All rights reserved.

Latest Fad “Disorder”–Eating Well

Really, it makes me want to slap my forehead. Or put my head between my knees and not look up till people come to their senses. It’s the latest fad “disorder,” coming to a doctor’s office near you. It has a name– Orthorexia. Sounds serious, doesn’t it. Know what it is? Eating well. Yep. Orthorexics are largely vegetarians and vegans, people who check labels, avoid junk food, plan menus and eat a healthy diet. The “disease” has even worse symptoms–Orthorexics don’t limit their calories, because they don’t eat junk food. They avoid artificial ingredients, trans fats and high fructose corn syrup.

I’m not making this up. Dr. Steven Bratman made up the disorder’s name in the 1990s. He fretted that these people couldn’t be treated, as they had a mistrust of antidepressants, which is the “cure.” I’m guessing that you then get some sort of treatment to succumb to peer pressure and head for the nearest fast-food place to nom down on cheese fries.

Bratman has a book out (of course) called Health Food Junkies. “if you get a thrill of pleasure from contemplating a healthy menu the day after tomorrow, something is wrong with your focus,” Bratman says.

Today’s “normal” diet consists primarily of highly processed, empty-calorie, industrially produced food. I’d love to see if there was a grant from some giant food processor to help Bratman along. I have not looked it up yet, and am not implying he did. The reason I’d like to know is that the best decisions for giant food conglomerates are certainly not in the good-for-you range of food choices.

Ensure, the wait-gain liquid often given to nursing home patients is mentioned as a food Orthorexics avoid. Well, as Ensure is loaded down with chemicals (the label lists 40 artificial ingredients), it looks like I have a case of orthorexia. Sign me up, and no, I don’t want your antidepressants. I’ll just grab my journal over here, and feel better writing about it.

Image: www.newscientist.com
–Quinn McDonald is married to a persona chef. She is a writer and transition coach. See her work at QuinnCreative.com. (c) 2008 All rights reserved.

Tortillas and Passover

There is not a matzoh to be had in Mesa. Well, not quite true. I could have purchased a case, propped up against the old Easter Peeps and Paas egg-coloring kits. And I’m not overly concerned that in Mesa, many people think Passover must be the same time as Easter. The city was founded by Mormons, and their 114,000 foot temple is a major site in the city. About 80 percent of high-school graduates in the Mesa/Chandler area identify themselves as Mormons. To Mormons, Jews are “gentiles,” which always makes me smile. And if you want to talk about persecution and immigration, Mormons can add a big chapter to that book.

But there I was, on the second day of Passover, having been in five grocery stores in Mesa and not turning up a small package of matzoh. There was no other Passover food available, not even a display, not even dusty bottles of gefilte fish on a shelf next to Ramen noodles in the “International Food” section.

What to do? Matzoh is unleavened bread, made in haste, by a people who were not wanted in the area. So it seemed to me that a great stand-in for the bread of affliction would be tortilla. Flour tortillas to be precise. They are made without a leavening agent, and cooked one at a time, made at meal time to be eaten. It was a good match. I purchased a pack of the kind you have to finish yourself.

If you compare the picture, the largest difference seems to be the shape.

When I got home, I wanted to prepare a Passover snack, so I turned the front electric burner on “low” on the electric stove and tossed a tortilla on it. Flipping it over to keep it from sticking to the heating burner, I got a good facsimilie of a hot tortilla. I buttered it, sprinkled agave sugar on it along with cardamom, cinnamon, corriander and, yes, a few grinds of red chiles. Hey, it’s a tortilla. I then rolled it up and enjoyed a wonderful Passover snack, while contemplating all the peoples in the world who are pushed from one geography to another, who choose a better life in a place different than the country of their birth. It seemed a fitting thought for the day.

Images: matzoh: www.exploratorium.edu, tortillas: www.sacatomato.com

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and workshop leader who teaches communications, including writing, giving presentations and corporate culture. See her website at QuinnCreative.com

Bring Back the Butter

Turns out that you should have been eating butter all along. Yep, margarine is bad for you, and no matter how much they juggle the formula, all those fake butters aren’t helping reduce your cholesterol at all. And while our mouths are open, turns out that some trans fats are fine, too.

In other words, mom was right all along. And the corporations were not. All those trans-fats, the hydrogenated ones, were created for cost reasons. Solid corn oil (margarine) was cheaper to make and store than naturally solid fats, like butter.

All this comes from a well-researched article in the February, 2008 edition of Bon Appetit magazine.  The article, written by Nina Planck, author of Real Food: What to Eat and Why explains that the problem “was not science, it was politics.” Quoting Dr. Walter Willet, chairman of the department of nutrition at the Harvard School of Public Health, the article says, “Tras fats are the biggest food-processing disaster in U.S. history. In Europe [food companies] hired chemists and took trans fats out. . . .In the United State, they hired lawyers and public relations people.”

It’s not over. While you are busy buying “trans-fat free” food, the label just means that one serving has less than half a gram of trans fat. And serving sizes vary. So if you eat three servings of a trans-fat-free labeled food, you may have just eaten 1.5 grams of trans fats, Planck explains.

The best advice in the article is, “Dont buy fake foods (margarine) or industrial versions of real food (hydrogenated lard.)

Bring back the butter. Use the fat of previous generations: butter, lard, beef tallow. You know, all the things people ate when there was less heart disease.

Butter image: www.justhungry.com

–Quinn McDonald is a writer who loves to cook. She’s married to a personal chef. Now if only they could sell the house in Virginia and live in the same state, they could share good, fresh, butter.

Snack attack

For the last three nights, I have had snack attacks late at night. After 10 p.m. No idea why, but I find myself peering into the pantry or fridge, hunting for the perfect nosh. Fresh blackberries? Nope. Mango? Nope. Snacks need to fall into the snack-food scope: salty, crunchy, sweet or chewy. Must be empty calories or it doesn’t count.

Here’s what’s tempted me successfully:

Peanut Butter filled pretzels. Satan invented these. They make a pleasant hollow sound, just to remind you that the peanut butter is encapsulated in some scary way. But they are crunchy, salty and sweet. 8 points on the late-night snackometer.

Pirate Booty. Yep, from Trader Joe’s. Crunchy, with a slight plastic aftertaste. Artificially cheezy and perfect. Odd mouthfeel of salt, and felty-cheese. 6 points on the late-night snackometer.

Baked Snap Pea Crisps. Must be healthy for you–vegetables, right? These come in a metallized single-serving plastic bag. That means you can’t stop eating the.  Ignore the grease stains on your fingers. Absolute heaven in the crunch-salt-snap category. 10 points on the late-night snackometer.

Seedy little current cookies. Also from Trader Joe’s. An odd, plasticized-looking, slippery little cookie made of pressed seeds and currents.  For my money, they could have left out the peanuts and used hazelnuts instead. But it doesn’t slow me down much. 7 points on the late-night snackometer.

San Juan Cajeta. I discovered these at the Rancho Grande market. They are caramels, but pressed flat on obladen, an edible type of paper that keeps them from sticking to the wrapper and looks like a host. These caramels are made of goat milk and have a rich, creamy taste.  A definite 10 points.

What’s your latest snack attack?

Tea Joy

In these wonderful spring days in the Sonoran desert, the days are warm and the nights cool. And on cool nights, I like to drink tea. Jasmine-touched green tea is wonderful, as is white tea (Snow Leopard) which is even richer in anti-oxidants. And, of course, my favorite–masala chai. The syrup-sweet concoction you get at most premium coffee places isn’t really chai. I don’t like the amount of sugar (or sugar-substitute) they put into it–it’s far too cloying.

Masala chai has the spices of India in it–cardamom, cinnmon, ginger, and a sprinkling of black pepper. The pepper gives it a deep aroma, and there is nothing better when the evening has a nip than to prepare a cup of chai and dunk a biscotti into it. (And yes, I do have a recipe for chocolate and black pepper biscotti. What can I say, I love the mix of pepper and sweet).

But making tea can be a bit difficult, if you are only drinking one cup at a time and don’t usually use tea bags. And then the place I buy my coffee had the answer–and one of those answers I like–not too expensive and pure luxe!

Peets coffee and tea emporium has a lovely, rounded borosilicate tea glass. It comes with an infuser. The clever device has a broad top that closes off the class, so you are not losing heat while the tea is steeping. Remove the lid and you have a place to put the infuser. Ah, but the best is yet to come.

The glass is double-walled, providing not only a thing of beauty but cool hands. Borosilicate glass is light and dense, so the double-walled glass is lighter than a regular glass, and remains cool to the touch even when your tea is hot. There is another benefit–it’s tough, so it doesn’t scratch easily or etch in the dishwasher.

Now those cool-enough-for-tea evenings have a satisfying ritual of tea making. And when the weather gets too hot for tea, well, that double-walled glass will hold ice chai just as well.

–Quinn McDonald is a writer and a certified creativity coach and tea drinker. She was a coffee drinker first, and still loves coffee for breakfast. See her creative work at QuinnCreative.com  Images from Peets website. (c) 2008 All rights reserved.

Steel Cut Oats: Worth the Time?

Oatmeal has always been a favorite breakfast food in my house. Not the instant, which always tastes as if it had been made in the Play-Doh factory, the old-fashioned. Yes, they took a little longer to cook, but it could be done in five minutes. I cook oatmeal in milk, it gives a much richer taste. But milk means you have to stir, so 5 minutes is about all I could handle.

My niece introduced me to steel-cut oats. I was astonished to find that they were not flat or flaked. These oats are still grain-shaped.  (You can see both flakes and steel-cut in the photo.)

The taste was completely different–sort of nutty, like wheat berries, and an incredible taste treat. They also filled me up completely for three hours, making it easy to pass up the donuts, eclairs and other breakfast goodies in my clients’ kitchens.

Steel-cut oats take forever to cook. The package I have said “about 10 minutes.” Only if you need to break out a few annoying molars. It takes a full 20 minutes to cook steel-cut oats. If you are cooking more than one serving, you can count on 30. I just don’t have 30 extra minutes in the morning, so I began to experiment with shortcuts.

Here are two that work really well:

1. Stir and run method. Put the milk (or water) into a deep saucepan, add the oats (follow directions on the can) and bring to a boil, stirring constantly. Once they have boiled for 30 seconds, you can turn the burner to warm (if you have an annoying electric stove) or the lowest gas setting. Then go take a shower or get dressed. Do not desert the oats. Check in once in a while to make sure there is enough liquid in the pot. You probably will have to add more. I add water, even when cooking with milk, give it a quick stir, and go put on my makeup. By the time I’m ready for breakfast, the oats are done perfectly.

2. Cook two servings at once, following the instructions above. Eat one serving, and put the other one in a covered container. If you are covering the container with plastic wrap, make sure the wrap touches the top of the oatmeal to prevent milk skin from forming. The next morning, you simply pour a little milk or water into a pan and warm up the oatmeal. You cannot tell the difference in taste or texture.

Don’t reheat in the microwave, you will be eating dense, chewy little rubber bullets. Mix in dried cherries, fresh raspberries, or cut up crystalized ginger. Add sugar, honey, or syrup. Or just eat it plain.

–Image: Quinn McDonald.

Quinn is a writer and certified creativity coach. See her work at QuinnCreative.com.

Rambutan: Who knew?

Rambutans look like lychees (or litchees) with spiked hair. The spikes are soft and red, adding a whole new dimension to the fruit. I’ve eaten them fresh in Singapore, but here in the States, the canned ones are easier to find.

Until last week, when I found them freeze dried at Trader Joe’s. I had to buy a bag. It takes a while to break into the bag, because freeze dried items are crispy from lack of humidity.

Now, rambutans are juicy and lightly sweet and a bit tart. So I wasn’t sure how I’d like a crispy one. But the taste is amazingly rambutan-like, and the texture is extremely satisfying.

Don’t know if I’d put them in my cereal, but eating them out of the bag is a treat not to be missed!

===Quinn McDonald is a certified creativity coach married to a personal chef. As soon as the house sells in Virginia, they can continue their lives together.  See her work at QuinnCreative.com

Speaking Spanish, Sort of

When I moved to Arizona, I decided I’d like to learn Spanish. I’m a bit long in the tooth to go to a traditional class, and time is at a premium while I’m building my training business, but still. . .

So my language lessons come in the grocery store. I shop at Hispanic markets, most of which are simply wonderful, stocked with helpful, friendly employees, who smile when I ask for help–for both ingredients and language.

I’m only a bit embarrassed to admit that my vocabulary of baked goods and snacks is a lot better than for meat and vegetables. That photo on the left is of dried hibiscus blossoms, used to steep a tea, which is then chilled and served over ice as aqua fresca, “fresh water” or an ice tea that is bright red, herbal and delicious. In Spanish, ‘hibiscus’ is ‘jamaica,’ which explains a lot.

Last night I had a tiny breakthrough, but breakthrough it was. I walked into a store, managed to buy shrimp without too much difficulty, although I mangled the numbers, not knowing whether I was asking for 12 shrimp or 12 pounds of shrimp. ( Not to put too fine a point on it, had I been in a big box store, the employee would have shrugged and piled up 12 pounds of shrimp, because they are not trained to think, just get you out the door.) The woman behind the counter asked, in English, if I wanted 12 shrimp (one pound) or 12 pounds. She then told me the difference in Spanish. I had learned something.

Next I was off to the bakery counter. I said, “Yo quiero dos empanadas, por favor. Uno de crema y uno de pina.” (I’d like two turnovers, please. One cheese and one pineapple.) The clerk picked up a tray and a bag and asked, in Spanish, “for here or to go?” I’d never heard the expression for ‘to go,’ but I figured it out from the tray and bag. I pointed toward the bag, and said, “to go,” using the same words he had used. He didn’t blink, handed me the bag, and I said, “Gracias.” (Thank you.) I then walked to the check out stand, and when the checker said, (in Spanish), “the empanadas are fresh, huh?” I said, also in Spanish, “I like fresh empanadas. They are yummy.” She rang me up and told me how much I owed. In Spanish. Fast. If it hadn’t been for the screen with the number on it, I would have had to admit I had no idea how much to pay.

The joy in the three minutes from bakery to check out, no one had to correct me, and I was spoken to in Spanish. That means that my Spanish is good enough to be understood, grammatical enough not to mark me as a slow learner, and idiomatic enough to elicit Spanish responses. Tiny victory, but I’m grinning. Pineapple empanadaas are a little piece of heaven.

–Image: photograph of dried hibiscus blossoms, Quinn McDonald. Story and image, (c) 2008, All rights reserved. Quinn McDonald is a life-long learner and a training developer in, well, communication topics. See her work at QuinnCreative.com

Perfect Southerwestern Dinner Menu

Not far from where I live is the Mercado Hacienda (Spanish for Ranch or Plantation Store). If you live in the Phoenix area, mark your maps–it’s at the Southeast corner of the intersection of University and Country Club in Mesa. It’s a small store, but the ingredient list is perfect for a great little dinner.

Next month, when Kent comes to visit, I want to do the cooking. He’s a personal chef, so I want to make sure he gets a vacation. Here’s the menu:

Drinks: Rum and fruit juice. The mercado carries guayaba (guava), tamarind, guanabana (soursop), mango, pear and pineapple. I prefer the fruit juice, but there is also a powder mix that would work well. It comes in pineapple, mango, guava, and my favorite, jamaica. I didn’t know that ‘jamaica’ is Spanish for ‘hibiscus.’ You can learn a lot in a grocery store.

Appetizers: The mercado has the best guacamole I’ve ever eaten. My husband’s was my favorite until I tasted this. Even he will agree that the rough-chop mix of perfectly-ripe, pale-green avocado studded with lime, jalapenos, red pepper flakes and onion is a perfect mix of spicy, but not fiery, ingredients. You can taste the fire and the sour tang of the lime, but the bland, creamy avocado soothes your tongue. I’ll cut up fresh corn tortillas and fry them to make nachos, hot and salty, for the guacamole.

Main course: Grilled shrimp tacos. The mercado has mouth watering meats, shrimp and fish. I’m going to get some of the larger shrimp, grill them under the broiler, and wrap them in hot flour tortillas filled with field greens, slivers of jicama and red pepper and moistened with green salsa, also from the mercado.

Dessert: I’ve got some choices here and haven’t made up my mind. I can certainly make Meyer Lemon posset and serve it over berries. Or the incredibly smooth coconut sorbet topped with dark chocolate shavings. Or keep it simple. Just a few grinds of pink, black, and green peppercorns over premium French vanilla ice cream.

Think I can get him to stay for a few days?

—Images: Soursop, on left, www.css.cornell.edu Guava, on right, www.tropicalfruitnursery.com –Quinn McDonald learned cooking basics from her mother, who was French. She practiced on various dates, unsuspecting visitors, and her son, until she became quite good at putting together a decent meal from a few, well chosen ingredients. You can see more, but different work of Quinn’s at QuinnCreative.com (c) 2008 All rights reserved.