French Chocolate Heaven

Y’all.  I don’t know why I don’t live in France. I mean, forget the whole I-don’t-speak-French thing, the fact that I’ve only lived in Texas and Colorado my whole life, the lack of job opportunities (not that I’ve looked…or have I?).  Or even the fact that I could NOT bring myself to load the puppies up in a crate for a 17-hour plane ride over.  A move like that would take only one form of inspiration:  chocolate.

And not just any chocolate, but chocolate with all sorts of delicate and decadent fillings like ganache and jasmine tea.  Chocolate with GOLD and SILVER leaf on it in a shiny gold box!

Oh dear Lord this stuff was good.  {Stops for a second to silently thank the beautiful Jackie for sending this little slice of Heaven}  Nate and I each had half of a piece each, but I’ll be honest:  I didn’t want to share.

Here are the 10 types of chocolate in the box as described by the packaging (but in English…for the most part):

1. Palet Argent: Ganache with dark and milk chocolate.  Decorated with silver leaf.
2. Palet Or: Ganache Grand Cru Guanaja.  Decorated with gold leaf.
3. Ganache Moka: Ganache with coffee (0.4%).
4. Chapka Lait: Ganache with milk chocolate and finely chopped almonds (8.5%).
5. Ganache The Jasmin: Dark chocolate ganache flavored with jasmine tea (2.0%).
6. Carafrutti Abricot: Milk chocolate ganache and apricot pulp (17%). This one was my favorite!
7. Orangette: Strips of candied orange rinds (59%).
8. Carre Praline Ivoire: Almond praline (65.5% of praline.
9. Rinette Lait: Filled with hazelnuts (24%) and finely-chopped almonds (6%).
10. Rinette Ivoire: Filled with hazelnuts (20.8%) and finely-chopped almonds (6.4%).

Like I said, INCREDIBLE.  The kind of incredible that makes you want to move across the ocean and start a new life in a country where everyone would laugh at you for attempting to speak French with a Spanish accent (hey, I can’t help it that I took 13 years of Spanish and now pronoune everything from French to Mandarin Chinese with a little Spanish flair!).  It’s that good.

So, after our incredible life-altering chocolate experience, it only made sense to have cheap ‘n’ cheesy American pizza afterwards!

Community group was amazing, and it started out with a some Little Caesar’s $5 large pizza love.  I had a slice each of pepperoni, Hawaiian, and mushroom before digging into something a little better for me:

Mixed field greens with Annie’s Tuscan dressing (which, by the way, tastes horrible – made me wish for Annie’s Shiitake dressing instead) and fabulous fruit salad with bananas, strawberries, clementine sections, and blackberries:

I would say I only ate about half of each salad, mainly because I was really full from pizza and the blackberries were a little tart.  We had a great discussion about our strengths and how to apply those to bless others, which provided a great deal of encouragement for me!  We also starting planning our Cinco de Mayo party, which will likely be the coolest party anyone’s ever been to.  Just sayin’!  After our group was over we went home and promptly fell asleep!

This morning I woke up, did some yoga to stretch out the legs, and had a bowl of yogurt, banana, pumpkin seed granola, and Bonne Maman cherry preserves:

Oh, and watched the snow fall.  Because it’s totally normal that snow would fall in the middle of April, right?  🙂  I can here Nate saying it now, “Welcome to Colorado Scooter!”

Thankfully the clouds are clearing now and I can see the blue skies overhead.  The great thing about snow in Colorado (at least in the cities) is that it melts pretty quickly in the spring, and snowfall like we had last night will be going away later today!  I’m happy because I’ll still get to walk today in the sunshine, a DEFINITE mood-booster for me 🙂

Have you ever had some sort of food that has transported you to another country or another time?  What was it?  Also, do you like chocolate?  What’s your favorite kind? Any time I have hand-made pasta it takes me to what I imagine Italy to be like, OR back to when my mom used to make homemade noodles for chicken noodle soup!  And chocolate – oh my, chocolate!  I love the dark stuff, as in no less than 65% cacao!  I love how slow it melts, the tart-creamy-nuttiness, and the smoothness.  Mmmmmmmmm 🙂