Valentine’s Day is just around the corner and several events are already planned out in celebration of the love season, one of which is the 10th annual Salem’s So Sweet Chocolate and Ice Sculpture Festival happening on February 10-14.
Chocolate tasting and over fifteen sparkling and humongous ice sculptures are expected in the city center of Salem. Ice Sculpture Themes include the SSU Viking, a crystal snowflake, a single-room room school house, TinTin and Snowy, a dragon, Marilyn Monroe, and the Salem Witch. Huge discounts, along with free chocolate are also to be expected from a lot of many business establishments downtown.
The festival officially kicks off with a Chocolate and Wine Tasting which is happening Friday, February 10 from 6:30 to 8:30 pm, at Hamilton Hall, 9 Chestnut Street. Wine and chocolate samplings that will be presented in this drool-inducing event are courtesy of premier Salem restaurants, stores and sweet shops. The tasting will be sponsored by the Salem Waterfront Hotel & Suites. Tickets cost $25 each and you can get them in advance at 265 Essex Street at the Salem Chamber of Commerce.
As long as the weather permits on February 11 & 12 from 12 to 4 pm, you can take advantage of the trolley rides around the festival offered by the Salem Trolley which costs $1 for adults, while children are charged nothing. Pick up locations include the Salem Visitor Center, Pickering Wharf and Washington Street near Eastern Bank.
Furthermore, downtown Salem has an abundance of places to eat. This makes it an ideal venue for a romantic dinner or a casual lunch. And to celebrate the chocolate weekend, a number of the most renowned restaurants in Salem will be offering special chocolate on their menus such as desserts and cocktails. Salem retailers who are taking part in the festival will be having in-store promotions, creative displays, and products that lean towards Valentine’s Day and chocolate. Such products include chocolate fondue/fountain and Valentine-inspired dog treats.
Salem Main Streets, the Salem Chamber of Commerce, and local merchants, restaurant and business owners are looking forward to have you in the 10th annual Salem’s So Sweet, Chocolate & Ice Sculpture Festival. If you are in the area, don’t miss out on the chance to be in Salem’s sweetest event of the year.
It’s nothing different from the regular white milk, only cocoa-flavored! It has the same nine essential nutrients but with a taste children dearly love. To have a healthier celebration of Halloween this year, the California Milk Processor Board (CMPB) which created ‘Got Milk?’ is encouraging families across all California to make chocolate milk the treat of choice on Oct. 31, instead of the usual unhealthy counterparts. Got Milk?, by the way, is an American advertising campaign encouraging the use of cow’s milk. The campaign has been recognized as of great help in milk sales in California.
A little piece of candy here and there may not be harmful, but an average Jack-O-Lantern bucket pretty much holds about 250 pieces of candy, which altogether approximately totals 9,000 calories and have about three pounds of sugar. Imagine that going into your system. Even for adults, it’s a heck of a lot!
“Adding chocolate to milk doesn’t take away its unique combination of vital nutrients necessary for optimal growth and development,” says Ashley Rosales, a registered dietitian with the Dairy Council of California. “Kids only get nutrients from foods they eat, and giving them chocolate milk is a fun and tasty way to ensure they receive calcium, vitamin D and potassium, which many children lack in their diets.”
The said campaign is just one of the many ways to keep proper nutrition in mind as childhood obesity is on the rise. A research in the April 2008 issue of the Journal of the American Dietetic Association has shown that children who consume milk, even flavored milk like chocolate, get more nutrients and have a healthier diet overall, in comparison to those who don’t.
Go trick-or-treating with Got Milk? on Halloween for free chocolate milk, Got Milk? items and a whole lot of fun for the young and the young-at-heart:
- ANAHEIM
Anaheim Fall Festival and Halloween Parade
Oct. 29, 2011, 4 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Downtown Anaheim Center Promenade
205 Center Street Promenade, Anaheim
- OCEANSIDE
11th Annual Dia de Los Muertos & Halloween Festival
Oct. 30, 2011, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Mission San Luis Rey
4050 Mission Ave., Oceanside
- OAKLAND
2011 Fruitvale Dia de Los Muertos and Halloween Festival
Oct. 30, 2011, 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Fruitvale Village
Along 12th St. between 33rd and 37th Ave. in Oakland
I know it is absolutely nowhere near Easter, but it just feels right to share this info on the spur of the moment. C’mon now, cut me some slack!
For starters, Easter is known as the most sacred Christian holiday of the year. Jesus Christ’s resurrection after his crucifixion is celebrated on Easter Day or Easter Sunday.
Did you know that ninety million chocolate Easter bunnies are produced each year? No child’s Easter basket is ever complete without a chocolate Easter bunny or two. But how did Easter get mixed up with a rabbit? Where did that come in?
No one knows for sure but rumor has it that this is so because rabbits are well known for their enthusiastic breeding habits, making them a common symbol of fertility.
Another legend points the Easter bunnies to the Goddess of Fertility, Eostre, for whom the term “Easter” was derived. The legend says that Eostre found a wounded bird in a snowy forest one winter. In order for the bird to survive the cold, she turned it into a rabbit. But the transformation was unfinished, because the rabbit continued laying eggs. As a thank you, every spring, the rabbit decorated her eggs and presented them to Eostre.
Or maybe because rabbits are known for their high-energy mating schedule and it was just intended as an Easter inside joke, but who knows? People started creating rabbit-shaped pastries and cakes by the beginning of the 19th century, and later on came up with Chocolate Bunnies!
Whether to eat the ears first, or the tail or the feet, it’s all up to you. But most of the Easter bunnies lose their ears before the other parts of their body. Chocolate bunnies have evolved into creations that are milk, dark or white chocolate.
And there you have it, the origin of chocolate Easter eggs, bunnies, and all of those spectacular chocolate stuff that chocophiles cannot live without! Life without it is just downright boring, especially at Easter, which is, yes I know, and I’m saying it again, nowhere near.
Did you know that in Mexico, chocolate is used to make offerings during the Day of the Dead festival? This particular fiesta acts as a commemoration to pay tribute and honor all the deceased members of the family. Chocolate and sweets are important components of the festival. People give each other skulls made of chocolate or sugar. The Day of the Dead fete is celebrated throughout the country on the 1st and 2nd of November.
As morose as it may sound, it is in fact a cheerful occasion where departed loved ones are reminisced. Some families even construct altars dedicated to the dead relatives. The altars are filled with flowers, candles, wooden skulls and photos of the dead. The families celebrate and bring to mind the deceased members by eating the favorite foods of those passed. The specific foods that are specially eaten in this celebration are pan de muerto which is a skull-shaped bread and Calabaza en Tacha which is a dessert made with sweet pumpkin, cinnamon, and piloncillo, dark sugar cones.
Other families visit and get together at cemeteries where their relatives are buried. The grave sites are wonderfully bedecked with candles and cempasúchil flower. This orange marigold was the specific flower that the Aztecs, who were the first ones to be associated with chocolate, used to remember their dead. Some families also bring toys for dead children and even bottles of alcoholic liquor to adults.
Each place in Mexico has its own unique cultural style of celebrating. Merriments take place throughout Mexico and they celebrate in high spirits, but the liveliest ones are in Patzcuaro, Oaxaca, Chiapas and San Andres Mixquic which is a small town in Mexico City.
People in Mexico usually perform dances wearing wooden skull masks called calacas. Chocolate and sugar skulls are also made in some parts of the country and the name of the dead person are engraved on the forehead of the skull, a friend or a family member will then eat these.
When the Spaniards invaded Mexico, they deemed this practice as profane and barbaric as the Spaniards viewed death as the end of life. Nonetheless, to the Aztecs, Mayans and old civilizations in Mexico, death is just a continuation of life.
The Spaniards tried to cease the tradition but in vain. However, it is possibly no coincidence that the Day of the Dead festival is celebrated on November 1st which is All Saint’s Day, and November 2nd, All Soul’s day.
Try booking a trip to Mexico on the Day of the Dead festival just to try it for taste!
Do you have it on your calendar? Sure, today is a Friday the 13th, but never fear, the antidote is right around the corner. May 15 each year is National Chocolate Chip day!
Of course this brings up the question, “Who invented the Chocolate Chip?” The answer is a very American story.
Here’s an excerpt from our own chocolate lesson #12 which is dedicated to the chocolate chip…
…The better question is, “Who invented the chocolate chip cookie?” It’s a better question because it really all started with the cookie.
Ruth Graves Wakefield is credited with having invented the first chocolate chip cookie in the 1930s.
Ruth, along with her husband Kenneth, owned the Toll House Inn, near Whitman, Massachusetts.
The most popular version of the story goes like this:
One day Ruth was making a cookie recipe and found she had to substitute semisweet chocolate for the baker’s chocolate. She had a chocolate bar which she chopped into small pieces, thinking they would melt into the dough just like the baker’s chocolate always did.
But, much to her surprise, when she took the cookies from the oven, the small chocolate bits had not completely melted. They only softened. Her new “chocolate chip” cookie turned out to be a big hit with her guests!
The semi-sweet chocolate bar that Ruth used had come from the Nestle Chocolate Company. As the Toll House Inn chocolate chip cookie recipe became popular, sales of Nestle’s semi-sweet chocolate bar increased.
Nestle and Ruth Wakefield struck a deal. Nestle would print the Toll House Cookie recipe on its packaging, and Ruth Wakefield would receive a lifetime supply of Nestle chocolate! How about that for a deal, a chocolate lover’s dream!
Today, Nestle produces around 250 million chocolate chips – every single day! And, about 25% of all cookies baked in the United States are chocolate chip cookies!
Now you know some history of this great national holiday.
As we’re coming up fast on Easter you may be thinking about all that Easter candy you’ll need to put in baskets and hide around the house. Of course some of that candy is likely to chocolate bunnies. Your children will expect the annual chance to bite off the bunny ears.
Perhaps you already know that your son or daughter is crazy about Zombies and will attack a defenseless chocolate bunny by not just eating its ears first, but by going straight for its brains. Maybe it’s time to play along and consider giving the bunny that fights back – a chocolate zombie bunny!
Who knew that the Zombie virus could attack the flesh of little chocolate rabbits. Well now you do. Let this little bad boy loose on your unsuspecting child, and it will be the perfect Easter Zombie attack.
This chocolate bunny is made of solid white chocolate, mostly colored green, except for its beady yellow eyes, the dripping red blood, and part of its exposed rib cage. I guess even bunny zombies lose track of their own flesh.
Now instead of feeling sorry for the bunny whose head gets chomped first, you can encourage your child to stop the spread of the Zombies. No stopping with a double-tap. You can tell him to hold tight, open wide, and put this chocolate Easter bunny out of its misery in one swift cut of the teeth! Chew and swallow. Yum.
I have purchased other silly things from ThinkGeek in the past. When I saw their Chocolate Zombie Bunny April Fool’s gag I couldn’t resist posting. Due to popularity, they’ve been out of stock but should have a new supply available sometime today (April 15, 2011).
Master chocolatier Patrick Roger is kicking off this Christmas season with a giant Christmas tree – made from chocolate of course!
Here’s a preview….
Patrick Roger calls himself a chocolate artist and sculptor of flavors. He owns several chocolate boutiques in France.
The Christmas tree weighs 4 tons and measures 10 meters high. It is made of dark chocolate and took a month to create. Santa Claus and his reindeer, all made of chocolate too, surround the tree.
If you are wondering if it is for sale; sadly, no it is not. However, if you want a nibble, simply donate to the chosen charity. And fly to Paris, but hey, that’s not a bad idea!
Muslims celebrate Eid Al-Fitr, a three-day feast that marks the end of the Islamic holy month of Ramadan.
Special foods are prepared and eaten during Eid. Some of those dishes are prepared days before Eid because it takes so long to prepare and cook them.
It’s interesting that chocolate has become a recent tradition to help celebrate Eid. The younger generation prefers the chocolate over some of the more tradional sweets.
As a result some chocolate shops may experience the highest sales orders of the year at the beginning of Ramadan.
In the Muslim home, guests are often served Arabic coffee (sometimes called Turkish style coffee) with an assortment of chocolates. If it’s anything like the Turkish coffees I’ve had then a dark chocolate would make a great pairing with great compatibility of flavor notes.
Those two things, Mother’s Day and Chocolate, just fit together nicely, don’t they?
Mother’s Day is celebrated on different days and different months depending on which country you live in. In the United States, it is always celebrated on the second Sunday in May.
We can thank Anna Jarvis for this great day. She is the one credited for founding Mothers Day in the US.
How do you choose the perfect chocolate for Mom?
The choices are plentiful (overwhelming, really) and if you have not gone chocolate shopping in a while, you will be amazed at the variety of exotic new flavors and the gourmet quality of old classics.
Narrow down the choices by focusing on Mom’s fondness:
Floral: try chocolate truffles made with lavender, rose or my favorite, orange and geranium!
Tea: milk chocolate made with flavored teas and chai spices are absolutely delicious.
Fire: chili peppers added to chocolate bring out the intensity of the chocolate and of course, give it a kick.
Savory: don’t judge a book by its cover: chocolate with crystallized ginger, mushroom ganache or goat cheese taste better than you think.
Posh: opening a gift box of molded chocolates decorated with sprayed on cocoa butter designs, gold, and glitter will take her breath away. They might look too beautiful to eat, but do it anyway. They taste just as good as they look.
Now pair that scrumptious chocolate with a series of chocolate lessons to keep the experience lingering long after Mother’s Day and you’ve got a real winner of a gift!
“Man cannot live on chocolate alone; but woman sure can!”
-author unknown
Just in case you haven’t guessed the obvious… I enjoy eating chocolate, and I want chocolate to continue to be part of my world!
According to the International Cocoa Organization, 2.5 million farmers produce almost 90 percent of the world’s cocoa on about 5-10 acres. Most of the world’s cacao is grown on the small family owned farm. The best chocolate comes from shade grown cacao managed by farmers using small-scale, low-impact techniques.
There are still large, old style cocoa plantations in business. Cacao trees grow best in shade, but on a plantation they grow row upon row in full sun like an orchard. This practice results in the trees becoming stressed, more susceptible to disease and the soil more quickly depleted of nutrients. It is a large-scale, chemically intensive operation.
On this Earth Day, I am reminded to support the protection of our agricultural ecosystems as well as our fair trade economic systems.
I recently enjoyed a Divine Dark Chocolate 70%. Check out the Divine Dark Delights Gift Box at www.divinechocolateusa.com. Divine dark chocolate has a robust cocoa flavor with hints of fruit and earth and a smooth non-bitter aftertaste. That is heavenly!
Sweeter still was the warm fuzzy feeling I got from supporting the farmer-owned cooperative, Kuapa Kokoo, and their commitment to keeping chocolate around for a good long time.
s.![Reblog this post [with Zemanta]](http://img.zemanta.com/reblog_e.png?x-id=1dcf2d7a-5602-438a-a38d-396dd3d499ac)
