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.

I recently ordered a bunch of fancy chocolate from ChocoDirect.com, a Canadian company that specializes in importing/attaining fancy chocolate, generally from Europe. I just broke open the bar I was most excited about and I thought I would write a little review.

It is a 75% cocoa dark chocolate bar from Bonnat Chocolatier in France. In particular it is a single source chocolate meaning the beans used all come from the same place. In this case they come from the village of Chuao in Venezuela. There is a bit of controversy about this because the Italian chocolate company Amedei is supposed to have the exclusive rights to those beans in a contract granted by the Venezuelan government. Nonetheless, this is perhaps the finest bar of chocolate I've ever tasted.

It's dark and bitter as it should be, but also smooth and luxurious without any of the bite of harsher chocolates like Lindt. Plus, the flavour is interesting, with lots of subtlety and variation that is lacking from normal dark chocolate. I'm not going to start comparing it to random berries or trees or nuts or things, but I certainly understand how a more pretentious person could. I assume this flavour is the hallmark of the Chuao cocoa bean.

The other neat thing about the chocolate is the ingredients list: cocoa, cocoa butter, sugar. Nothing else, just the pure ingredients. No stupid chemicals like lecithin to mess things up.

I will definitely be getting this one again.

I finally got a dentist here in Toronto and today was my first appointment. It had been about two years since my last cleaning so it took a little longer but I was surprised that it took two hours. I think part of the problem was the number of x-rays. I lost count of the number of times the hygienist left the room to press the little button that made the big machine go buzz at my face. I haven't developed radiation-related super powers yet, but I'm still hopeful.

Last weekend was pretty fun. I climbed on Friday and had a really good night. Then on Saturday I went roller blading with Chris and Justin west along the waterfront path. Round trip we went twelve and a half kilometres which was pretty awesome. Then Patrick and Toni made us salmon for supper and we played Ticket to Ride.

There was some other fun stuff going on too, but I've forgotten and am too distracted by the new episode of The Office that I'm watching right now to remember.

Today I competed in the "Tour de Bloc" eastern regional finals. This is a bouldering competition that is used in part to determine the Canadian national bouldering team. Of course I use the term "compete" loosely as I was only in the recreational division and I didn't do spectacularly well. It was a lot of fun though!

We (myself, John and Lap from work) climbed in the morning and then spent the afternoon shopping/wandering around until the finals started at 6pm. We had supper at a Shoeless Joe's near the gym. Little did we know that that particular location is like the local headquarters for the Toronto Football Club fan base and a game was being played just as we went to get food. The place was absolutely full with TFC people wearing red and screaming at the televisions like a bunch of soccer hoodlums. We had to share a table with some of them because there were no other places to sit in the entire restaurant. It was at least as entertaining to watch all the people as it was to watch the game. Oh, and TFC won 3-2. I think David Beckham was on the other team if that means anything to anyone.

The finals at the competition were beyond anything I've ever seen before. The climbers were all outstanding and the problems were all ridiculous. Nobody got them all but the guy who won got three of four and the final climb had all of the one hundred or so spectators screaming. Pretty exciting! I wish I had brought my camera just to take pictures of the final but I didn't think about it because I knew I'd be climbing and didn't want to carry it around for fear of breaking it.

There were also a ton of door prizes at the end. I won a pair of bright red American Apparel "Classic Girl" underwear branded by the climbing hold company "So Ill." Pretty hilarious, I had to go up to the front and try them on (over my pants) and get my photo taken. There were also good prizes like backpacks and crash pads and awesome t-shirts, but me, I won them women's underwear. Awesome.

The rest of this weekend was pretty fun too, I went shopping a bit with Kim on Saturday and we also hit up Cora's for some yummy breakfast. In the evening I played games with Chris and Patrick and Toni. Good stuff!

Today I played Portal at Patrick's house. And I beat it! That game is way too fun and amusing. And I only had to tolerate mild abuse from Patrick and Matt as they watched my gimpiness.

After playing we went for a walk with cameras to take pictures of things. It was a really nice day and it was fun to go exploring down by the waterfront. I'm pretty tired though so I'm not going to write much and I'll just post some of the photos. There are also two older photos from my mom's house that I just got around to getting off my card today.

Flowers at my mom's house

My cat Angus!

Rickety stairs at the Canada Malting Co.

Towers at the Canada Malting Co.

Warning signs against entering the Canada Malting Co. Apparently it's dangerous.

Cat in an alley in the Canada Malting Co.

More towers at the Canada Malting Co.

Creepy statue at the Canada Malting Co. in front of the city.

Toronto skyline.

Steamwhistle bottle at the bar we stopped at on the way home.

Salt and Pepper shakers