A bunch of fun stuff happened over the last few days and I haven't blogged much about non-chocolate stuff lately so I thought I'd do a quick update.

Friday I went with a bunch of people to see the Indiana Jones movie. I wasn't really expecting anything more than a typical Indiana Jones movie and so I wasn't disappointed. It certainly doesn't stand on it's own, but it's still a super fun movie.

On Saturday I just relaxed in the morning and then went climbing in the afternoon. For supper we made butter chicken from a fancy mix my mom got me for Christmas. It was pretty good but much much spicier than expected. We had lots of naan bread though so that helped ease the spicy. Saturday evening I played more Boom Blox with Chris and Matt. It's a really cool puzzle game for the Wii that's like a crazy version of Jenga with good physics emulation. Good times!

Sunday Kim and I went to a bunch of Doors Open Toronto stuff. Doors Open Toronto is when a bunch of buildings in Toronto open up for tours and stuff that you can't normally do. Last year I went through the CBC and also a fancy eco-condo thing. This year we saw the old train roundhouse, the green-roof on top of MEC and a couple buildings in the distillery district. The stuff was cool, but nothing super-amazing or anything. It was really nice just to walk around in the sun all day (the sun burn wasn't as nice though).

Monday night was my second lead climbing class! We learned how to belay and even started to practice falling. Falling on lead is a bit scary as you fall much farther, but it worked out pretty well. As a belayer we learned how to catch the falls gently so the climber doesn't slam into the wall or fall too far.

Tonight for wing night we went to Fressen which is a vegan tapas bar on Queen West. It was really good, and lots of fun to share a bunch of random food. For the most part I didn't know what anything was but it was all yummy!

Tomorrow is Wednesday which means more climbing. Since starting the lead class I've been averaging close to three climbing sessions a week which is really really good because the more often I get out the better I get. Unfortunately it's also pretty tiring. I'm visiting my mom for her birthday this weekend so it will be nice to take that time to recover.

After three tasty but not particularly special bars of chocolate I'm now on to the two super unique bars I purchased. Both are from the Italian chocolate company Amedei.

The Amedei Porcelana bar is 70% cocoa and has a truly unique origin. The beans are from a plantation of genetically pure Porcelana Criollo cocoa trees. Because of the difficulty in maintaining such plants Amedei only releases a limited number of bars in batches. They are actually hand-numbered which is pretty cool. My bar is number 2832 of 20000. As you can imagine, this all makes the chocolate particularly expensive. It is by far the most expensive bar I've seen. It cost $15 for a 50g bar. That's 30 cents per gram. A Snickers bar is about one cent per gram. Ouch. Anyway so the question is: is this bar worth the price?

Well it is very very good indeed. The flavour is strong and full and also, unsurprisingly, pure. It's constant and unchanging. It's a very neat experience to just have this solid blast of pure chocolate awesomeness that is sustained until the end. And the end is also noteworthy. The flavour doesn't linger, it just vanishes. This actually makes the chocolate very satisfying. I often find that when I have chocolate flavour still in my mouth it makes me want to eat more of the chocolate right away. This didn't happen here. Which is good because for $15 I feel like I need to make this bar last.

Anyway, is it worth $15? Probably not on a regular basis. But it was definitely worth $15 to try it once.

Amedei Porcelana bar in package

Amedei Porcelana bar out of package

Today's chocolate is from Michel Cluizel in Paris. The beans are from a single plantation in the Dominican and the bar is 67% cocoa. It's neat that the cocoa is from just one plantation that has been farmed by the same family for over 100 years. The chocolate is good, it has a good flavour and is stronger than other bars in the 60% range I've had. It's not nearly as smooth as the Valrhona bars however I've since learned that smoothness is sort of a trademark of Valrhona. Despite the lack of smoothness, the taste and texture end well and it still goes down nicely.

Michel Cluizel Los Ancones in package

Michel Cluizel Los Ancones out of package

I was going to wait a little while before opening my next bar of chocolate, but I got a bit peckish this evening and thought I'd try out the other Valrhona bar I ordered. This one is the Valrhona Grand Cru Guanaja and it's a 70% cocoa bar that is a mix of Trinitario and Criollo beans from plantations in South America.

I wasn't expecting much after the last Valrhona bar was so mediocre, and as a result I was super surprised with the deliciousness of the chocolate. This is exactly what I want from my chocolate. It was smooth like the Caraïbe but not boring. The flavour is rich and full and it lingers in the most pleasant of ways. No bitter aftertaste like crappier dark chocolate, just smooth awesomeness all the way. It melts nicely in your mouth without any effort, it's not grainy at all. This will definitely be a bar I get again.

Valrhona Grand Cru Guanaja in package

Valrhona Grand Cru Guanaja out of package

I got my next order of chocolate on Tuesday but I didn't get a chance to sample it until tonight. I wanted to give each bar proper treatment so I had to make sure I had time to take photos and taste carefully.

I ordered my chocolate from A Taste For Chocolate this time since my other place doesn't stock Amedei and I wanted to try that brand.

Today I tried the Valrhona Grand Cru Caraïbe, a 66% cocoa bar made of beans from the Caribbean. The beans are of the Trinitario variety, which is a hybrid between the common, hardy Forastero cocoa plant and the higher quality but less hardy Criollo cocoa plant. According to Wikipedia, 95% of the world production of cocoa is Forastero while the rest is split between Trinitario and Criollo.

So anyway, the bar was very mild and easy to eat. The flavour was good but not particularly strong or interesting. I checked the Valrhona website and noticed that you can get the same chocolate with slivers of hazelnuts. I think that would be a better bar as the hazelnuts would not have to fight with the flavour of the chocolate (since it's mild). Plus hazelnuts are just awesome. So overall...good chocolate but I probably won't get it again.

In other news I had my first (of three) lead climbing course on Monday and it went really well. We spent the first class learning how to clip the rope as you climb. After practicing again on Wednesday I have it down pretty well. It makes the climb a lot harder though because you have to keep stopping to clip, which requires you to hang off one arm while hauling the rope up with the other. As if there wasn't enough to do with your arms on a climb as it was. But it was fun and will open up a lot more climbing to me so I'm pretty excited.

Anyway here are some photos of the chocolate.

My Chocolate Order

Valrhona Grand Cru Caraibe in package

Valrhona Grand Cru Caraibe out of package

I ordered a bunch more chocolate last night so thought I should write a quick review of the other interesting bar from my previous order. It's from a French company called Pralus and is 100% cocoa from Madagascar. Being a 100% bar it's super intense but in small quantities it's pretty tolerable. I was also surprised by how (relatively) smooth it was. It wasn't powdery or chalky or anything which was very nice. It took me about three weeks to finish the bar, just eating little bits at a time. I don't think I'd get it regularly because it's pretty challenging but I did like it.

I can't wait for my new shipment of chocolate to arrive!

In other food news, we're making chili tonight and it's going to be awesome.

I walk by the convention centre every day on my way to work so I have a pretty good idea of which conventions are in town on any given day. It's always amusing to see all the people heading into the centre from their hotels all with matching convention badges. Anyway for the last two days the LCBO has been holding a conference called "Live the Brand" or something similarly silly. The interesting thing about this was not the conference but the people. Apparently most LCBO employees who would attend such a conference (store managers maybe??) smoke a lot. I walked by several times and there were always hordes of people with matching LCBO name tags smoking just outside the doors. And I mean smoking a lot. I didn't know it was possible to produce clouds of smoke outdoors, but walking through them felt like walking into a dank smoke filled bar.

Last night at climbing I finally signed up to take the lead climbing course. Lead climbing is where you use your own rope and clip in to anchors as you climb. It's an essential skill for outdoor climbing and it also will allow me to try out some new walls at my gym that are lead climb only. I'm pretty excited but the course at my gym is fairly disorganized. They take your money and your name and then they call you "at some point" to tell you when the course will be. It's not a big deal because I trust them, but it would be nice to have a bit more definition.

I had my second dental cleaning yesterday in as many weeks, apparently the first one wasn't good enough. It's OK though because my insurance company didn't seem to mind paying again. I have to go back again next week for two small fillings and then I'm done for a little while. Unless the dentist insists on taking my wisdom teeth out. I plan to resist a little because they don't bother me at all.