It's spring, that time of year when many women (and men? is this universal?) start knocking off the sweets in a last-ditch effort to lose a few pounds before swimsuit season officially begins. Or so I'm told. Happily, no such impulse has come over me as of yet. Here are seven dark chocolate bars, listed in order of my preference from outstanding right on down through disgusting, along with the usual random perfume recommendations because this is a PERFUME blog.
Starting out with awesome! eat three!, we've got the Calindia bar by Vosges (cardamom, organic walnuts, dried plums dark chocolate, see image above). This doesn't have quite the same rush of cardamom as Dolfin's Noir Cardamome, but it's still a generously spiced bar...
Man cannot live on perfume alone; every so often, we must talk about chocolate instead. Continuing with the same theme as my last dark chocolate with "stuff" added post, here are a few of the chocolates I've tried recently, and once again, I've sprinkled in a few perfume recommendations in a vain attempt to keep things on topic.
First, let me just say: OMG, OMG, POCKET COFFEE!!1!!1! Where have these been all my life? I had never even heard of them until Kevin sent me a generous handful. Pocket Coffees are bite-sized chocolate cubes lined with caramelized sugar and filled with sweetened expresso...
I've resisted Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and countless other social networking endeavors, but I've succumbed to Twitter. If you're on Twitter, you can follow me here. I'll be posting links to all the articles that appear on the blog, but will also post about the fragrances I'm testing, late breaking sales and news items, and so on.
Update: since many people assume a kind of "follow-me-I'll-follow-you" policy at Twitter, I should have mentioned that I'm not planning to follow everyone who follows me...
The Prix Eau Faux poll was supposed to be open until midnight tonight, but due no doubt to some mistake on my part, it closed early. I've reopened the poll, so anyone who didn't get a chance to vote, you can do so now and I'll leave it open until the morning. Update: poll is now closed, thanks to everyone who voted!
We try to stay on topic around here. I did blather on about teas recently (see red & green, oolong post still to come), and today I'm going to blather on about yet another of my favorite addictions: chocolate. Dark chocolate, to be more precise, and dark chocolate with "stuff" added, to be even more precise. I like plain dark chocolate, but I like flavored dark chocolate even better. To keep this vaguely related to perfume, I've included a few "what to wear while you eat" recommendations.
One of my favorite brands for flavored dark chocolate is the Belgian company Dolfin. They've a wonderful selection. I recently sent March over at Perfume Posse some little Dolfin squares, including their Noir Cumin. March commented that "while we can’t decide whether we really like the cumin bar, it is strangely addictive", and that is entirely true...
As promised, a green tea follow-up to last weekend's post on scented rooibos teas. This will be our last post until Wednesday. If you're celebrating Christmas, have a perfect holiday and I hope Santa is very good to you. If you're not celebrating Christmas, enjoy the temporary respite from rampant commercialism.
As I said last week, I drink a lot of green tea. Most of the green teas I buy are unscented/unflavored, but I do have a cup of jasmine tea every day, and floral-scented or fruity teas are nice to have around in the afternoon. Here are a few favorites...
Not about perfume at all, just my online version of a Christmas card: Straight No Chaser of Indiana University sings The 12 Days of Christmas, courtesy of YouTube with thanks to Erica for the link.
I have a number of addictions. Perfume comes first (of course); tea is probably a close second. I drink green tea all day long, sometimes as many as 8-9 cups. I taper off the green tea around 5 or 6 pm and switch to various herbal blends. Rooibos tea (pronounced "ROY-bus", aka red bush tea) is one of my favorite evening teas.
Rooibos is available in a green (un-oxidized) form, but is more usually sold oxidized, and the color of the leaves (and the steeped product) is a deep reddish-brown. It's caffeine-free and rich in antioxidants; more importantly, it tastes good. Wikipedia describes the taste as sweet and slightly nutty, I would describe it as smooth and woody, almost bark-like. You can drink it plain, but it blends beautifully with all sorts of fruits, flowers and spices, and perfume fans who love getting samples in the mail will be happy to hear that many tea merchants have sampling programs. Here are a few scented varieties of rooibos worth trying...
As you may remember, Rosewater won our pre-contest to name our upcoming contest to reward "creative fragrance writing": The Prix Eau Faux. Or, better yet, Le Prix Eau Faux. Shockingly enough, Rosewater is not interested in claiming her prize, which was described as "a 99.9% full bottle of the celebrity fragrance with the most ironic tag line of 2007". So instead, she's asked me to plug her favorite charity:
I'd like to tell you about ableplay.org, a unique web site that helps parents and professionals select toys appropriate for kids with disabilities. While providing a resource for parents and professionals, Ableplay also creates revenue for the national nonprofit Lekotek, which uses play to help children with disabilities grow physically, mentally, and spiritually. This is the "real" thing--nothing faux about it.
As promised, a green tea follow-up to last weekend's post on 
I have a number of addictions. Perfume comes first (of course); tea is probably a close second. I drink green tea all day long, sometimes as many as 8-9 cups. I taper off the green tea around 5 or 6 pm and switch to various herbal blends. Rooibos tea (pronounced "ROY-bus", aka red bush tea) is one of my favorite evening teas.