Life's So Sweet Chocolate Place

Maybe I'm dabbled enough in Food Science, but a tour of a chocolate shop would've excited me to no end a few years ago. Now, it doesn't faze me. Perhaps I already have a working knowledge about chocolate. Anyway, as I'm now doing a Food Science summer program at Cornell University, my fellow interns and I decided to go to Trumansburg NY and take a grand ol' "tour" of the Life's So Sweet Chocolate Place.

We arrived at about 2:30, which was half an hour early, and the storekeeper told us to leave and walk around for half an hour. I guess the astounding ten of us overwhelmed the tiny storefront, whose floorspace could barely fit two Smart Cars. And so, we trudged through the only street in Trumansburg that had shops, and dilly-dallied until 2:55, when we re-entered the store.

There, we were now welcome with open arms.

We started with an introduction of the shop. This is where the original Life's So Sweet Chocolate Place stood, some (at most 85) number of years ago. Here is a painting in the shop, reminiscent of the Taughannnock Waterfall some 10 minutes away.

We were then led into the back room, where we all sat down and listened to a lecture. First, we learned that we had just passed the chocolate storage area that was "between 60 and 70 degrees, with no humidity and no funny smells. We know that the chocolate there is kept well or else you would've encountered some funny smells when you walked past". Well, cool.
The person leading the tour was very nice, but honestly didn't offer much information that I wouldn't be able to find on Wikipedia. Apparently, we were supposed to be awed by the fact that chocolate comes from a plant. How astonishing. This tour was not geared towards anyone with basic science knowledge, and much less to (food) science majors. Therefore, I was slightly disappointed. However, I did get 3 pieces of chocolate out of the $5 for the tour.

We learned very generically about how chocolate is made. According to the lecture, cacao trees are about 5 ft tall, and are planted +/- 20 degrees from the equator, which includes Hawaii, Madagascar, Ecuador and some other places. Life's So Sweet obtains its chocolate from a company that makes a "perfect blend" (quoting lecturer) of cacao from all these places. However, they also sell chocolate with cacao from only one region, and the taste of this possibly varies by season. Unpopular chocolate truffle flavours have included "double cherry" and pie.




I touched a frozen cacao pod from Cornell, and checked out a jar of unroasted cacao beans. I learned that they had two tempering machines, and tempering chocolate takes about an hour and a half (with white chocolate taking less time and dark chocolate taking more).

They use bunny shaped moulds and hedgehog shaped ones. The metal moulds are 85 years old and are used out of tradition and durability, while it is easier to observe the chocolate spreading and hardening process in the plastic ones. Apparently, in the plastic moulds, when the chocolate has hardened, it unsticks itself from the mould. One of us (incidentally a Chemical Engineer) asked why that is, and the person giving the lecture gave an explanation that kind of sounded like this:

Well, it's because of chemistry. Let me try explain it in the easiest way possible. Well, if the chocolate isn't tempered well enough, it doesn't stick to itself. When it's tempered, it sticks together and, if you look here [shows chocolate in mould], the sides have already begun to unstick from the plastic, so later, the rest of the chocolate will unstick."

So, we still don't know. However, I do know that anything that is not chocolate is not made by the store, but by some other family owned business. For example, the jelly beans come from Jelly Belly (apparently 6 generations old), while the sponge candy comes from Rochester NY. There is also sugar-free chocolate, which comes from some other supplier.

The three pieces of chocolate included:

White chocolate half-coated dried apricot
Half-baked attempt to please apricot and white chocolate lovers. Why not cover the entire apricot?Sweet. Not waxy (more creamy). Miniscule grit, which I liked.


Milk chocolate
Plain milk chocolate with a "snap" sound when bitten. Creamy and typical, but not waxy at all. Miniscule grit.


Dark chocolate "Aztec" truffle
Simple dark chocolate ganache with 3 types of cayenne pepper with spicy chocolate coating and sprinkled with red pepper flakes. Not too spicy.



I didn't fancy any of the chocolates for sale, since they all seemed kind of normal, though there was a balsamic vinegar truffle which someone said didn't particularly taste like balsamic vinegar. I think I read somewhere online that balsamic vinegar actually brings out the chocolate flavour more, though.

They also had some novel idea where you put a box of 5 chocolates where the shoe goes.

Bell Pepper & Tofu Sandwiches

 Red and orange bell peppers, marinated spicy tofu, barbecue chips, on multigrain whole wheat toast.

Hot Dry Noodles (Wuhan Specialty)

In exchange for providing my cousin with ongoing hours of ACT and TOEFL prep, my uncle bought me food which my dad brought back food from his trip to China. There is nothing I'd rather have, especially as the food they got is just unobtainable here in the U.S., or it's really expensive, or the shipping fee costs more than the actual food product. Wuhan is a city in Hubei province, and my uncle and his family live there, as does a local culture of pretty delicious food. My mum always reminds me that Wuhan cuisine is quite spicy and numbing - 麻辣 (ma2 la4).

Today at lunch, my mum made some of the Hot Dry Noodles, 热干面 (re4 gan1 mian4 - it's literally called "Hot Dry Noodles" in Chinese), from a package of them that we got from my uncle. Of course, normal Hot Dry Noodles are eaten in dingy little restaurants or at street food stands in Wuhan. I remember this one time we went to my mum's friend's restaurant when I was really young, and the Hot Dry Noodles were too spicy for me, so I didn't really appreciate them.

Despite the fact that we didn't eat the straight-from-the-pot-in-a-cheap-Wuhan-eatery Hot Dry Noodles, the packaged version still reminded me of those sultry summers when I was in China, forced to eat Chinese food all the time, and being fussed over because we were "foreign". It's actually pretty funny because once, at one of those banquet dinners, my relatives ordered some fries for me and my brother because we refused to eat the Chinese dishes. The fries ended up being extremely spicy, due to the fact that the oil that the restaurant used was spicy. It's pretty funny, now that I think of it.

The Hot Dry Noodles came with packets of sauce that usually is homemade at those roadside eateries. One is a sort of chili oil with carrots and ginger, another is sesame sauce (sesame paste and sesame oil), and the other is soy sauce. The Hot Dry Noodles today were so spicy that I only used half the package of chili oil, and I had to eat a lot of bread on the side. They weren't as numbing as I remember them to be, which is a good thing. I don't really like the numbing sensation, even though it's always present in Ma Po DouFu - ma2 po2 dou4 fu3 (麻婆豆腐). I think that my brother was more zealous about these noodles than I was; he sighed that these reminded him of Wuhan. I don't feel too much nostalgia from eating these, which is a little bizarre. Even though it doesn't look sanitary (food inspections?! Psh, yeah right), if you ever go to Wuhan, you should try these! They're probably not going to be plated neatly, and the cook may tell you to hurry up and pay the few yuan already, but Hot Dry Noodles are one of the most famous dishes in Wuhan (this statement is backed up by my cousin's response to a TOEFL Speaking question).

Frozen Peanut Butter

While browsing the internet trying to find how much ice cream costs per pound (or per ounce. I've still found nothing...), I realised that I've never frozen peanut butter before.

I've frozen bananas, gooseberries, apples, blueberries, currants, cookie dough, grapes, bread, and nut brittle. I've never tried freezing peanut butter.

Hm, when I lose my frosh 15 I'll eat a jar of frozen crunchy peanut butter. Perhaps I will even add some chocolate, cereal, breadcrumbs, tortilla chips, and yoghurt into the jar (after I pour out all the oil at the top and use it in cooking). It will be peanut butter froyo, but the ratio of peanut butter to yoghurt will be something like 97:1.

I realise that I probably sound a bit crazy.

However, I think it is really crazy when people drive over a mile to get to a chain ice cream store, spend $3-4 on one measly scoop of ice cream, and drive back home. (In the case of Philadelphia, walk to a brand-name ice cream store, purchase a $4.25+ ice cream with tax).

It makes more sense to pick up some a whole container (1 pint to 1 quart to whatever value-pack-size) of ice cream for $1-7 while doing the weekly/monthly grocery shopping. (In the case of Philadelphia, walk literally 300 m further from the brand-name ice cream store, purchase a $2 pint of the same brand's ice cream flavour, with/out? tax).

I also learned today at Trader Joe's that the goat cheese on crackers is called chevre and it's even more delicious when it's spicy.

berkshire bark - Tropical Heat

So here's a funny story.

The Uncommon Market unintentionally sells a lot of expired food.

There is expired vegetarian sloppy joe sauce, pasta sauce, curry sauce, noodles (okay, the noodles will expire on May 11th this year), and other stuff. It's not as though the Uncommon Market is AWARE of this situation, though, since the same jars and packets of sauces have been sitting there for at least 3 months. Yes, I've been checking for 3+ months, because I've felt inclined to buy vegetarian sloppy joe sauce, and I've been waiting for a new shipment because the packets sitting on the shelf have been expired since February 2011.

No one else really checks expiration dates, but it's become a habit of mine ever since I bought some chocolate from the Uncommon Market in January, only to find that it had expired on December 17th, 2010. When one purchases a small bar of chocolate for $3.99 (Yes. Everything's price is jacked up), one expects high quality chocolate. One does not desire expired chocolate. In general, I don't mind eating relatively expired food - expired pasta, expired chocolate, expired rice (stuff that isn't perishable), but in this case, I had to make a stand. I'm already buying overpriced Dining Dollars, which I end up spending on overpriced food, so I'd BETTER get fresh food out if it

.

Sometimes I aspire to work for the FDA's Food Safety department so that I can research what "expiration" means, and whether one would drop dead after consuming some pie one hour post-expiration. Then, I wonder what life would be like being a freegan. If you push back the expiration date by ONE day - 24 hours - much more food (especially milk, yoghurt, ham, cheese, pudding, canned goods) would be saved in this world. However, I can't support any of this because there doesn't seem to be much research concerning food expiration.

Anyway, I ended up switching the chocolate for a new bar that will expire in June (but I've already eaten it), and I suppose the expired bar was thrown away, although it was perfectly edible (yes, I'm a hypocrite, right? Perfectly edible, yet I was so bothered by it that I had to exchange it).

The bar was called Tropical Heat, by berkshire bark, and the impression I got is basic, chunky, wholesome, and...spotty. It contained macadamia nuts, pineapple, mango, papapya, coconut, chili, and cayenne, and I couldn't wait to try it because I do like spicy chocolate.

The coconut texture was very pronounced, but I couldn't really taste its flavor. The pineapple, mango, and papaya were indistinguishable from each other (which is a bad thing, because...they're different fruits) and they all tasted flavourless and had a weird texture. I've had dried pineapple, mango, and papaya before, and those instances never made me think, "Wow. Am I chewing gillyweed? Stale gum?" The chocolate was normal dark chocolate, and yes, there was a hint of spicyness, but nothing too hot. It reminded me of the spicy chocolate drink from the Penn "Chocolate" Festival, so that was good. I honestly don't think it was worth $3.99, especially when I can buy really high quality pure chocolate, or just plain ol' cocoa powder, for $3.99 at Shoprite, or even Trader Joe's.

Back to buying noodles, rice and polenta, because at least those prices are only jacked up by 10-30% rather than 50-70% at the Uncommon Market.

Penn "Chocolate" Festival

"Next semester, I will be more involved in social groups at school."

That's what I said last semester when I realised that I was pretty much in two clubs.

Then I realised that if I joined another two, I'd have no time to do my homework, study, go to the lab, run, and eat food.

This is in addition to the fact that I'm already managing my time better than I was last semester.

So, I didn't join any extra clubs, but I do get emails from the Penn Gastronomy Club (which I should officially join, actually). Recently, I got an email about the Penn Chocolate Festival, and there were going to be "some of the city's best chocolatiers" and free samples present!

At the Hall of Flags in Houston Hall, the Penn Chocolate Festival took flight. Breezy. Short. Among the tumbleweed. It was too timid to be anything like other food events (e.g. Campus "Free" For All), which was good because it meant that each member of the audience had extremely personalised attention from the vendors, which included just two chocolatiers (Really).

Despite obtaining a lot of information from the vendors, I didn't get many samples, which was a bit of a let-down considering the blatant advertising in the email. Then again, the email claimed that there were going to be many chocolate vendors, which wasn't the case.

The sweet, thick and creamy tea (which didn't taste much like tea) with mini tapioca balls in the above image came from Boba Brothers. I loved the fact that the tapioca balls are tiny! (~2mm in diameter; it makes them drinkable via a standard straw, and it is quite a twist). Actually, I wonder how bubble tea would be like with various sized tapioca balls in the tea...

Although the liquid was super sweet, clean/not artificially-flavoured-ish, there was no "chocolate" in it at all.

My second stop was John&Kira's chocolate. The fact that they use local ingredients and have beautiful packaging and are a home business (I talked to Kira) means that their prices are jacked up, of course. For $6.50, I can get Chipotle, instead of a bar of chocolate. However, John&Kira's also have everything that Chipotle, and Godiva, and Lindt don't have; they own the company, they can allow me to make my own flavour, and they use ingredients from around here. The mint in the mint chocolate came from University City's Urban Garden! I have no idea where that is, but it's within a 3 mile radius, probably. According to the brochure, the honey comes from Millerton PA, while the berries come from Meadow Gap PA. I'm not sure why they're advertising that the coffee whiskey comes from Mexico or that the bergamot comes from Sri-Lanka, because those aren't "local", but perhaps the overall message is that these ingredients come from known sources, and we're supposed associate that with fair labour or something.

My first impression was that the ladybugs and the bees were super shiny. They were as shiny as marbles, although more pearlescent. Apparently, there is a really high cocoa butter content in them, since the're some sort of caramel (bees) or ganache (ladybug).

Kira gave me a pretty big sample of dark mint chocolate to taste. The mint was definitely true mint; it isn't the sweet stuff that I'm accustomed to in commercial mint ice cream or mint chocolate; it was legitimate mint-right-off-the-plant. Although I do like the peppermint/conventional mint better, this one was light and delicious too. The chocolate part was... normal, I would say.

I then went to the table promoting Sazon restaurant. The guy who was at the table was a real businessman; he talked non-stop about how his chocolate was real, untempered, pure, made straight from crushed beans from Venezuela (the "original/pure/clean/unadulterated" location of cacao, apparently). He explaining his experimentation with making truffles in his kitchen, and he talked about testing all his truffles on his friends. At one point, he gave someone in the audience a whole truffle. He didn't give any truffles to me though, even though I talked to him for a good 10 minutes about his truffles and cocoa. He walked me through the truffles; coconut ones, jalapeno ones, rum infused ones, berry-filled - "I don't care about rule of 3 flavours - you know, of chocolate, and two others. I just dump them all in together and you can taste them all!", he proclaimed. He pointed out that the ones in the middle compartment were vegan, and the coconut covered ones on the right were raw and made with a ton of coconut butter. "Nothing goes above 105 degrees. I just use a blender and a thermometer; my raw vegan friend is really anal about this," he boasts. Then, he listed the ingredients in these vegan truffles, and I kinda blanked out until him mentioned the word honey.

Honey. From bees.

I'm not vegan, but vegans do not eat honey.

Naturally, I responded, "Hey wait! Vegans don't eat honey!"

The guy (I'm sorry I do not know his name but on the website, he's the Chocolate Alchemist) looked at me in this really exasperated way (and perhaps with a hint of scorn - he's not a vegetarian or vegan), and said "Well, it's just some honey; we don't know if agave is a good idea because it might have corn syrup or other things added, and honey is pure. And, our honey is local. Besides, you know that there are different definitions of vegan and a lot of vegans eat honey."

He didn't say those exact words, but that was his position on the issue. Call me biased, amnesiatic, or downright silly, but if there is honey in those truffles, those truffles are NOT vegan. His (sorta pompous) attitude, coupled with the fact that he selectively gave out truffles for sampling, meant that I didn't have a good impression of his business. I know he's allowed to boast about his truffles and his super-awesome hot chocolate since they do taste delicious (the hot chocolates did, at least), but I felt like he was stepping the line by sticking honey in a "vegan" treat.

So, the hot chocolates were amazing. I tried the Clasico and the Cuaimia. The Clasico was thick hot chocolate that had no watery taste at all; it was literally like drinking flavourful, textured, melted chocolate. The Cuaimia had a hint of chili (although not too much; I think I would prefer more) and was less chocolatey. Neither had sugar, yet they were so flavourful that sugar wasn't needed to counteract the bitter taste of the ground cocoa (not that it tasted that bitter, in comparison to cocoa powder).

Another local vendor was the Kitchen at Penn. They gave out banana pudding, brownie, and and a plastic cup. No spoon. The food tasted ordinary, but I suppose that's the point, because the Kitchen at Penn is supposed to emulate homemade food for college students missing home.

Although the next few pictures depict vacuous, gilded and bland cupcakes, I'm still posting them because they are indeed prettily decorated. Buttercream Cupcakes (a cupcake truck, not to be confused with Call Me Cupcake, another cupcake truck) offers sundry cupcakes, including the best-seller, red velvet.

I tried 1/4 of a chocolate cupcake with peanut butter icing and purple sugar. The peanut butter icing tasted legitimately like peanut butter smothered in cream and sugar. The cake was kinda dry actually.

So wait a minute, two legit chocolatiers out of 5, at a "chocolate" festival?

Quiz Bowl - 18th!

I'm getting sick of posting about stuff that happened daysss ago.

This is the last one. I am finally up to date. Sort of.

On the 18th, I went to my first Quiz Bowl tournament at Newark, DE. It was amazing, even though I only buzzed in on two toss-ups. Out of 200. Yeah, 2/200. I guess I'll keep you all updated on how much I suck at Quiz Bowl, so you can all laugh at me :). I did get some bonuses though, which was nice. The best two bonuses that I got were the lac operon, and iodine [the clue had to do with thyroids... and I consider myself quite knowledgeable about thyroids now. I think.]

We had lunch at California Tortilla, which according to C doesn't exist where she lives... which is in California. I find this pretty amusing. The burrito had more vegetables than Chipotle's burritos. California Tortilla tends to be really cheesy. I mean this figuratively... not literally. I suppose it all evens out, since the burritos aren't cheesy enough. There were all these cheesy remarks posted everywhere on the walls.

There was a Wall of Flame [see image] with a zillion bottles of spicy sauce. I have never seen such detail in my life for spicy sauce. For wine, yeah, and for oil, yeah, but not spicy sauce. I tried some [not-too-spicy] chipotle sauce, which was actually sweet and spicy, and a tad sour. Quite delicious.

Do you see vegetables [that aren't pieces of shredded lettuce?! I DO!!]?!

After the tournament, four of us went to Tlicious [Newark, Delaware is extremely cheesy. One store was called "Lettuce Feed You", and they sold wraps. I'm telling you. This is cutesy cheesy campus. Which is pretty cool.]

I hate choosing a bubble tea flavour because they're all so delicious!

COCONUT BUBBLE TEA ROCKS...

We four ended up cramming in the back of a [small] car, sans seatbelts, for the drive home. The other four had to cram into the back of the other car, since they had missed the train. At least we had bubble tea :) and the game Contact [and trust me to use the word "rutabaga"].

MP's Chocolate!

So, during dessert [after which we ate pizza. Don't ask.] at MP's grad party, I tried three chocolates, from this rather dandy tin box of chocolates. It was a Polish brand. There were five flavours in total, but I tried the chili, coconut, and brandy flavoured ones since they seemed to be the most "exotic".
The chili one was a huge disappointment. Actually, the label just says "HOT CHOCOLATE", which implies that it is either a high-temperature-chocolate-drink flavoured, or a spicy flavoured chocolate [with the chili pepper, right there!]. It was neither, unless you count the fact that it was probably 35 degrees C. In this case [or should I say, in this tin], the whole box of chocolates were hot chocolate. Meaning that the brandy was hot brandy, and the coconut was steamin'.
In short, the "Hot Chocolate" flavour tasted like a dark chocolate truffle and did not taste even a bit peppery or chili-ful or spicy or zingy. Rather huge disappointment, as I wanted to measure my home-made chili chocolate cake [from a few years ago] with something that's actually in industry.
The "White Chocolate and Coconut" flavoured chocolate was really textured, though. No, really, I honestly. Fell. In love. With. It. The taste of coconut was very prevalent, which made up for the failure of the "Hot Chocolate" flavour earlier. There are some brands of chocolate in which the coconut is basically jam-packed in sugar, like the interior of an Almond Joy. This one, however, was literally "jam"-packed, in the sense that it was NOT a saturated dessicated coconut mass. Instead, there was some sort of coconut "jam" or goo, which worked well with the harder outer shell. The white chocolate was extremely smoooooth, not sickeningly sweet, and paved the way for this gelatinous center.

So, I've never had brandy before. I don't drink. This flavour tasted like a normal truffle, except that there was this hint of something weird. I suppose the weird thing was the brandy. Because I couldn't detect brandy [as I don't know what it tastes/smells like], everyone decided to sniff it. It was actually quite amusing [Okay, not just amusing. I was literally choking with laughter] watching people sniff the brandy truffle.
The bright side is that none of the chocolates that I ate had dimples due to the plastic or metal moulds at the factory. Thus, I can conclude that they are better than the Lindor Truffles, with respect to their appearances. Actually, the Lindor truffles were definitely inferior to these, tastewise, too. Plus, no condensation, even though this is July, whereas Lindor's sweaty exterior was prevalent in January.
Looks like ganache. Smooth move, Choco Amore doods. [MP gave me some Polish chocolate for my birthday last year. It was really smooth too, which was a pretty huge feat considering it was a fruit and nut bar.]

La Tasca

Spanish food is NOT Mexican food. It is NOT even close to Tex-Mex. People tend to forget that. Anyway, at D.C., we were wandering around the Gallery Place, after having visited all those museums, and we decided to go to the Hard Rock Cafe in order to show grandpa the "American" cuisine. Of course, being the disorganised family we are, we only decided this after trudging through random streets. By that time, we couldn't relocate it. Earlier, to prove that we actually passed by it, I had taken a picture: In the end, we went to La Tasca, which is a Spanish restaurant that sold tapas. On WordReference, "La Tasca" means "cheap bar" in Spanish, and "tapas" basically means "tapas". Or, "hors d'oeuvres". Or "snacks". [Today, I presented my senior project about The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao; great book! and there was tons of Spanish that I pronounced very badly. Je parle francais; haha]. Anyway, this is one of the times in which QUALITY is much more valued that "quantity".
My dad got some shrimp/scallop thing. $7
Grandpa got salmon. For these two, I have no opinion to give as I didn't consume animal pieces. $7.25
My bro got some kind of sausage with white beans. $6.75
My mum got this Spanish potato and egg and onion omelette. $5.75. In all honesty, this was really good [I tried some, because the mayo was spicy and my mum didn't like it]. Actually, it tasted more like mustardy-mayo, or something. It was EXOTIC!
My delicious mushroom risotto. Oh-so-smooth. $7
It's not really "La Tasca" because at Costco, you can get tons of food for $7. As in, you can get 48 pieces of sausage, or 92 mozzarella sticks. However, this restaurant had damn high quality [except for when they forgot to cook my brother's dish. By the time we 4 had finished, his dish hadn't arrived yet]. Although you can't really tell from them photos [they could be the size of my laptop, I guess], the serving sizes were really small, compared to other restaurant chains [the restaurant with the largest serving size has to be the American Olive Garden. I don't think I "love" Olive Garden. Anyway, good culture! [In the outskirts of D.C's Chinatown].