Sweet Wheat & Sucrose Oats

[Green Gibbon!]

Backtracking to the topic of cocoa economics, the foreign food shop has these expensive-ass chocolate bars with different amounts of cocoa all the way up to 99%. Is that even possible? I haven't tried one yet (I usually end up spending my cash there on gummis), but that sounds like it would be unpleasantly bitter.

[(No Imagination)]

It is, though "cocoa content" usually accounts for both fat and powder. It it has too much powder, the bar gets brittle and oxidizes quickly. If there's too much fat, it ends up lacking both taste and theobromine, but fat has to added in order to make those high-cocoa bars stick together.

You'd probably want more powder in your chocolate as the theobromine is chocolate's prime seller...bitterness is not as big of a problem as it can be remedied with salt and vanillin if needed, so if the powder contents are up to standards, it basically boils down to the recipe. My recommendation is it to try it out - if it ends up tasting bitter, you can always try melting it down, diluting it with milk and butter, then pouring it over some muffins or something. Though chances are it's made of 70% cocoa fat and 29% powder ... in which case it'll be bland as crud unless over-saturated with sugars.

[Green Gibbon!]

You are startlingly knowledgeable about all this. Is there like a university course? Cocoa Studies or something?

So in your educated opinion, what's the best chocolate out there? I'm assuming it's not Hershey's.

[(No Imagination)]

I'm no snob, and that Hershey's bar looks decent. What's the taste like?

I wouldn't say I'm qualified enough to pass judgment on best chocolate ever, as there's a whole world of it I've yet to taste - mostly US and Venezuelan stuff. But since I love learning about my favorite foods, I do have an idea or two on European chocolate market...and as far as regionally available cheap, sweet, on-the-road chocolate goes, the Toblerone beats the whole lot of Nestle, Milka and Mars inc. in my book. On that note, common Swiss stuff is usually sweet, expensive and high-grade, like Lindt bars; those are actually affordably cheap around here. German chocolate, as a different example, generally takes a slightly more sour route and includes lemon and orange peels (nothing out of ordinary; Ritter Sport, etc. are still very palatable, just, well, not really about cocoa anymore). I never tasted Germany's darker chocolates like Feodora or Hachez, but was told high praises about the former.

Some people swear by Ferrero. It's sweet like Milka, only more creamy. I'm not a fan.

Liking my cacao more bitter than not, the crude tastes of Balkans fit better with me. Out of exotic Yugoslavian brands listed, Kraš famously produces the Bajadera from the 1950s onwards which is very sweet and heavy on cocoa oils and caramel, while the Gorenjka products are more adult and experimental (there's all sorts of stuff in some of Slovenia's chocolates); I like buying and consuming both of these brands, if for differing reasons. But I wouldn't say they're the best chocolate! The best chocolate in the world would probably be something French - their chocolate makers love to take the bitter in cacao powder and make whole mansions of tastes with it. I dunno what their big name brands are, but I went to visit a French chocolate restaurant in Munich once, and ordered what looked 3-cm balls of chocolate mass dipped in raw powder. It looked inedible, like brown pebbles of dirt or something, but tasted sharp and salty where it should've been sweet and bitter by all accounts. It was awesome. (Maybe it was only awesome because it looked weird, cost me a dollar and a dime and was served by a person saying "si'l vous plait", but those facts doesn't make it any less so. >_>)

[Crowbar]

I'm a big fan of Toblerone, too. I've also been trying out those Lindt bars alot lately, as it happens, and what I've had has been pretty good. One of them had sea salt in it, though it sadly wasn't enough to really change the flavour all that much, I just got a bit of a salty tang in the odd bite, and compared to some of the stuff you're talking about there it's downright tame. Your knowledge of this subject continues to impress.

[Crisis]

I don't know about their dark chocolate, but I'm not a big fan of Lindt's milk chocolate - something about it doesn't sit well in my mouth. I don't really have the vocabulary to express what it is. I love me some Toblerone, though.

One time I had chocolate with chili in it. It was good! And that's about the end of my chocolate adventures. I guess my go-to chocolate is Bourneville, which is a cheap dark chocolate available just about everywhere here in the UK. It makes good brownies too.

[Green Gibbon!]

Hershey's is very milky. Of course it is milk chocolate, but it's like... more milk than chocolate, if that's possible. The aftertaste is disgusting. For years it was the only chocolate I knew, so I had no idea how gross it was until I started getting actual chocolate.

This is what Wikipoodia says:

"Hershey process" milk chocolate is popular in North America. It was invented by Milton S. Hershey, founder of The Hershey Company, and can be produced more cheaply than other processes since it is less sensitive to the freshness of the milk. The process is a trade secret, but experts speculate that the milk is partially lipolyzed, producing butyric acid, which stabilizes the milk from further fermentation. This compound gives the product a particular sour, "tangy" taste, to which the American public has become accustomed, to the point that other manufacturers now simply add butyric acid to their milk chocolates.

Hershey's dark chocolate is not much better, though.

[(No Imagination)]

Milka Orange Jelly.

This stuff is ludicrous. It's got way too much sugar and milk for the purist snob in me to consider "chocolate", but I can't resist it, that chemically-enhanced icing is just too good. It's got to have artificial opiates in it or some shit. I carved up 5 of these into 20 smaller trianglish cuts, poured some cold industrial vanilla pudding over in a bowl, stirred a bit, then gobbled it down in seconds. These biscuits definitely have some grain in them...so I suppose it's sort of like cereal..?

[Green Gibbon!]

Peach yogurt flavor. The "yogurt" part is probably a lie. It tastes just like regular artificial peach to me (granted, I don't recall ever having eaten actual peach yogurt).

Yogurt is pretty popular here, not just among health nuts but in general to the point that the rogue "yogurt" suffix is often added to unrelated fruit-flavored sweets. It follows blueberry almost inevitably on everything.

[Dr. BUGMAN]

Yogurt is popular here, too, to the point that Jamie Lee Curtis extolls its pooping qualities on TV.

But everyone is going for the Greek variety due to its high-protein, low-fat nature.

[Delphine]

Greek style yoghurt tastes better, too. It's the only kind I can eat plain without asking myself why I'm not eating something with flavor.

[Green Gibbon!]

I've received an alarming report from my mother that cereal prices in the US have gone up to almost $5 a box, even at Walmart. That's about what they were when I was in Hawaii, but I figured the prices would've been higher there because they all had to be shipped from the mainland.

Is there a grain famine I didn't hear about? What devilry is at work here?

[Delphine]

It looks like Kellogg isn't doing so well. The cost of wheat and fuel has gone up, so I'm sure other companies are facing similar issues.

Perhaps this is a sign to start eating actual food for breakfast.

[Green Gibbon!]

Perhaps this is a sign to start eating actual food for breakfast.

ｷﾀ━━━━(ﾟ∀ﾟ)━━━━ !!!!!


I never eat cereal for breakfast.

[Delphine]

DAMN, I take that back. and now i'm kind of jealous

So, what, do you just have cereal as a snack? Why not just have a couple of bananas if you want to induce glycemic overload?

[Green Gibbon!]

Cuz bananas are usually what I eat for breakfast when I eat breakfast at all. It's hard to plan 5 consecutive breakfasts around bananas though, cause when I buy them in winter, they take too long to ripen and when I buy them in summer, they ripen too quickly. Cheap, though.

Cereal is dessert, snack, or occasionally dinner. 2-3 bowls per sitting.

[Crazy Penguin]

Weetabix Crispy Minis are now available in Strawberry flavour. A sexy and exciting twist to an otherwise conservative brand of cereal!