Real Chocolate vs. Milk and White Chocolate

How many times have you walked up to the chocolate section in your favorite store and realized that the selection was baffling? So many types of chocolate and so many flavors. Do you go broke buying all the $5 dollar bars (we are not talking about Hershey's chocolate here) or just gamble and buy the ones with the animals on the front of the bar wrapper? If there are animals on the front it must be good, right? Because this means they 1. are fed to those animals? 2. made of those animals? 3. made for the benefit of those animals 4. a tricky marketing ploy to grasp more of the chocolate market share? If it's fluffy, it's good. Why not one with a homeless guy on the front of the wrapper, or a nickeled-&-dimed blue collar worker? Which one deserves your wallet's attention? That depends on what type of chocolate you like. 

White Chocolate:

1. It's not chocolate. Yes, we all know it, but don't want to admit it. If it were called sissy sweet white goo, we would have to cower from shear shame when we bought it and it would have to go in the brown bag with the 40 and the dirty mag. Perception has value. By marketing this as chocolate instead of white vanilla sugar blocks, profits surge. Good old capitalism, always exploiting someone to make a buck, just now it's you. It's hard out here for a sucker. How can you say that white chocolate is chocolate? Don't even go there. It's sugar, milk, cocoa butter(no cocoa though) and vanilla. No chocolate whatsoever. It was made for those who don't like chocolate but want to say they eat chocolate so they will fit in with their comrades who absolutely love dark chocolate and would excommunicate anyone who doesn't like it. White chocolate is sickly sweet and lacking in any worthy character. Who likes this stuff? Usually young women who don't eat any actual food but need the sugar to stay annoyingly bubbly and the nutritional deprived sugar fiend. This may be the same person. I am not sure. It's the candy for the Midwest; bland, boring, and white. It goes well with a plain russet potato and a plain steak. 
2. Again, it's not chocolate. This is why it is purchased. It looks fancy and tastes sweet. It can be classified with crème brûlée, vanilla ice cream, lemon cream pies, curdled sour cream, and Hershey squirts (no chocolate in this either. Don't try to find this in your local store. You may be kicked out by pure disgust). But, for those who like white chocolate, it provides them with a delicate and sweet addition to other sweet items such as strawberries, praline and cream ice cream and nougat. Get that sugar high on. The best parring with this is a bowl of white sugar. Simply add several pieces of white chocolate to your favorite bowl, add about two cups of refined white sugar and stir with a spoon until evenly distributed. This can be used to replace lunch or even dinner if you are a single woman living in Santa Monica or the Marina district in SF. Don't forget to light up a social cigarette afterwards.

Milk Chocolate

1. Comes in a variety of flavors. This is to hide the milky aftertaste of the bar. Aftertaste is highly reminiscent of drinking fresh milk directly from a cow's underside. Cranberries, almonds, toffee, green tea, coffee, orange peel, cinnamon are just a few of the flavors that you can find in these milky bars. They are less about the chocolate and more about the creaminess and other items in the bar. Got to love the 1-2 bugs processed in every chocolate bar. Yum! And you thought that crunchy chunk in your bar was just a chocolate nib. This is a good idea for gifts. Think of all the bugs your friends and family will eat with every bar you give them!
2. Is a second place chocolate. When dark chocolate is not around, this will do fine. But it must have a minimum of 40% cocoa. Otherwise, just grab a handful of Quick (coco flavored) and eat it straight out of your hand as fast as possible. This will have the same effect and taste. Also, because milk chocolate is light in its cocoa content, it does not have the health benefits of dark chocolate. Additionally, it contains more of that dreaded "F" word (no not the one that comes with drinking lots of wine with the opposite sex at wine bar)...fat. That is why it is so much more creamy. Pack it in and pack it on. Watch that butt expand. This is good if you like to do the Brazilian booty shake after a bottle of wine and then post it up on YouTube for all your friends to see.

Dark Chocolate

1. You should have skipped everything else. Why did you even read that stuff above? This is all you need to know and eat. Let this be your trendy overpriced power yoga namasté, your mantra, your fix. If you agree, you are a foodie and probably a snob. Dark chocolate is the best. Skip the creamy goo of white chocolate. You can find similar things in your Elmer's glue bottle. Skip the milky aftertaste and flavor distractions of milk chocolate. Skip right to the high antioxidant, serotonin releasing, special fair-trade gourmet bean variety, high cocoa stimulant content of evil satanic dark chocolate. Sin is here. Grab your wine, your partner and melt the chocolate all over your favorite parts while guzzling wine directly from the bottle. Bacchus would be happy.
2. Go buy it. Now you know it, go get it. Green & Blacks, Dagoba, Scharffen Berger, Dolfin, Divine, Terra Nostra, all excellent brands you most likely never heard of. You might have to give you first-born over for a bar of one of these, but after you take that first bite, you will forget about it and be ready to make a second-born to trade in for another bar. Pair these with wine or a great beer (see beer and wine post). It's best to get drunk and eat them all at once. Think of the flavor combinations. It's like Jellybellies for adults. Forgo the wine and cheese party and have a booze and chocolate party. Plain chocolate bars for dessert? Yes. It's darn good. Tastier and healthier than all the cheap and fatty deserts you buy at Ralphs or in the frozen section at TJs. You can find it online too! Do a search for "buy dark chocolate" and you will see specialty chocolate shops pop up. What better than chocolate delivered to your door? What about eating chocolate when it's being delivered to your door? What about drinking wine and eating chocolate when it's being delivered to your door? What about drinking wine, eating chocolate, and doing it doggy-style when it's being delivered to your door? You get the picture. I stop here. You go on.

Now you know the truth about chocolate. The secrets have been revealed and you are the wiser. Go forth and be a glutton with a wicked smirk on your mug.