Lindt – Life In A Word

Loco for Cocoa

In the last few weeks a purchase of pure gold reached a record high of over $2,400 an ounce. Thanks to uncertain global markets and a stepped-up demand from China, the precious metal is a more popular investment than ever. I find it amazing you can stroll into your local Costco and add gold bars to your shopping basket. The promo was so popular however, Costco ran out of their allotment in a couple of months. But here’s an even bigger concern. I’m worried Costco’s going to run out of chocolate.

It takes a bold headline to get me to read the article, and here’s a recent example: Chocolate Might Never Be the Same. What I hoped would be several paragraphs about a newer or even healthier spin on my favorite confection was anything but. Instead, I was stopped dead in my reading glasses when I saw the words “global shortage”. It seems the world’s supply of cacao beans, which come primarily from West Africa, has been threatened by climate change.

What I found interesting in the story was not so much the reasons for the shortage (drought, disease, aging cacao trees) but rather the speculation on how chocolate as we know it will change. Right away, of course, the cost of high-end products will increase (chocolate was already up 10% in 2023). Down the road, the powers that be may even relax the definition of “chocolate”, which currently requires (only) 10% of a product’s weight in cocoa. And further down the road you’ll find faux chocolate, which doesn’t contain any cocoa at all. Kind of like an Impossible Burger.

My relationship with chocolate, one that has matured beautifully over sixty-plus years, feels a little threatened. Like most kids growing up in the 1960s, I loved Hershey bars… and a lot of other candies that gifted me a mouthful of cavities. Then as a teenager, most of those candies fell by the wayside in favor of chocolate bars like 3 Musketeers, Milky Way, and Snickers. But technically each of those is a “candy bar”, where the only chocolate to be found is the outside coating.

I credit three products for developing my taste for “just chocolate”. First, Nestle’s Toll House Morsels, a bag of which could always be found in my mother’s pantry. Second, Chunky’s foil-covered blocks, which brought appeal to, literally, consuming chunk chocolate. Finally, Ghirardelli’s “Flicks”, colorful foil-covered tubes of what can only be described as oversized Toll House Morsels, sold alongside the popcorn and boxed candies at the movie theater.

Little did I know at the time, I was nowhere near the best that chocolate had to offer. A college year in Europe introduced me to more exotic brands like Perugina, Lindt, and Toblerone, and my taste for chocolate quickly matured from the milk to the dark varieties. Here’s how far I’ve come since then. The percentage of cocoa in a pure bar of Lindt chocolate starts at 70% (and goes all the way to 100% if you’re so bold). My preference? 78%, a far cry from the minimum 10% definition of chocolate. And a far cry from the chocolate bars of my youth.

We’re fortunate to have an authentic Belgian chocolate shop here in our small town. Its proprietor was trained as a chocolate artisan in Belgium, and her creations start with Callebaut chocolate (also from Belgium). Her truffles, as you can imagine, are exquisite. The pure chocolate nibs she sells by the pound are even better. And yet, as if to underscore today’s topic, her shop’s website now warns in a big, bold font: … at this time we are no longer able to accommodate wholesale prices. Meaning her big buyers are now paying as much as we smaller ones. Meaning chocolate is getting more expensive.

If the quality chocolate I’ve learned to love rises to price points I can’t digest, I might be forced to relive my childhood and settle for the “satisfaction” a milk chocolate Snickers bar claims to provide. It’s a regression I don’t look forward to, but at least it beats faux chocolate. Come to think of it, I should pick up a few of those gold bars at Costco. Maybe my Belgian chocolate shop takes more than cash or credit these days.

Some content sourced from The Atlantic article, “Chocolate Might Never Be the Same”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Confection Perfection

While grocery shopping the other day, my wife asked me if I’d eat something containing “77% dark chocolate”. I replied casually, “No, my limit’s more like 72%”. To those in the know, the percentages refer to the cacao content; not the broader term “chocolate”. And that level of technical shows you how far I’ve come from the 3 Musketeers bar of my youth.

Each of us taps into our particular coping mechanisms as we deal with impacts of the pandemic. My wife spends countless hours playing brain games on her iPad. More of my neighbors take daily walks than I’ve ever seen before. Me? I’m getting lost in a few rainy-day projects, but more to the subject at hand, I’m tapping into my dark chocolate stash. There’s something therapeutic about a small square of the good stuff slowly dissolving on the tongue. Dark chocolate is medication for troubled times. It sates my soul.

I can’t recall when I graduated from “candy bar” to “chocolate bar”, let alone dark chocolate. Like most kids of the 1970’s, I was drawn to Milky Way, Snickers, Nestle Crunch and the like, due to an annual dose of “fun-size” every Halloween. But somewhere I had an epiphany and realized chocolate was pretty good all by itself. The clincher: studying abroad in Italy during college. Overnight it seemed, I graduated from the products of Hershey’s and Mars to the more refined of Perugina and Ferrero.

The Wall Street Journal recently interviewed Thierry Muret, the executive chef chocolatier at Godiva, and after reading the article I thought, “Now there’s a dream job”. Not so fast, Mr. Goodbar. Turns out Monsieur Muret is an industrial chemistry grad who leans heavily on his knowledge of science to create Godiva-worthy delicacies. Muret’s all about “molecular gastronomy”, or decomposing/recomposing the very elements of chocolate to develop new textures and tastes. Think about that the next time you bite into a Godiva truffle.

This much I know. Chocolate’s most common varieties are “milk”, “dark”, and “white”, and while each contains cocoa butter, they’re better defined by their other ingredients (i.e. the dairy in “milk”). My taste for dark chocolate evolved over a lot of years, the way my coffee matured from “instant” to “espresso”, and my wine from “Chardonnay” to “Cabernet”. The basic versions simply don’t cut it anymore.

Thanks to Monsieur Muret, this much I don’t know about chocolate. There’s a tight temperature range (65°-75° F) where fine chocolate can be “tempered” (shaped into truffles, etc.) without altering its delicate flavor. There’s also a tight time frame to temper, because you don’t want the temperature to fluctuate more than a degree or two. But Muret colors outside of the lines. He throws temperature and time frame to the wind to concoct new textures and tastes. He once spent an entire year perfecting a single ganache. Whoa; that’s taking it to a whole new level.

The path to chocolatier typically goes through culinary school, not the chemistry lab. You start with a pastry degree (pastry degree?) and then specialize in chocolate/confections. Nope, not what I studied in college – not even close. But I do deserve a “tasting degree” for my years of experience.

If the pandemic goes on long enough, I may find the shelves of our grocery store devoid of dark chocolate. No problem: I’ll settle for a good ol’ 3 Musketeers bar instead. Milk chocolate (not to mention the dose of childhood nostalgia) is a passable backup coping mechanism.

The so-called experts say there’s “no high-quality evidence that dark chocolate provides health benefits”. With coping in mind, I couldn’t disagree more.

Some content sourced from the 2/7/2020 Wall Street Journal article, “Nothing Could Be Sweeter Than Being Godiva’s Top Chocolate Chef”, and Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

Kindling the Fire

Last Sunday, in the midst of a sleep-in/no-alarm kind of vacation, my dad dragged my wife and I to early church. That meant falling out of bed by 7 and leaving the house by 8:15. Not my idea of a relaxed schedule, to be sure. On the drive to church and all through the service, I found myself in a fog and close to nodding off (the meh sermon didn’t help). Even at brunch afterwards – stoked with a double-dose of mimosas – I couldn’t seem to shake the cobwebs. It wasn’t until much later in the day I realized something significant went missing from my daily routine. I hadn’t had my morning coffee.

Morning coffee is more a habit than an addiction for me. Or so I thought. It wasn’t so long ago I occasionally substituted juice or water, and the day proceeded as normal. Sunday’s drowsiness made me pause. Maybe the impact of caffeine is more significant as you age. Maybe drinking a hundred cups (or more) in a hundred days creates a dependency. As they say, caffeine is “the world’s most widely consumed psychoactive drug”.

While I debate the impact of no caffeine today, I can absolutely attest to the impact of lots of caffeine, with two examples of inconvenience. For me, caffeine sends a loud-and-clear, pulsing, Times-Square-sized announcement to my bladder saying, “IT’S TIME TO PEE.” Not in fifteen minutes. Not in fifteen seconds. Now; as in – get up and go NOW. I better have my path to the bathroom mapped out, and that door better be open. It’s like clockwork biology, forty-five minutes after that first coffee sip. Remarkably, the experts still question whether caffeine is a diuretic AND they wonder whether the amount of liquid expelled is equivalent to the amount consumed. I emphatically answer “yes” and “MORE”. With all the expelling, it’s a wonder my body doesn’t dry out and disintegrate. No matter; it’s a small price to pay for my daily drug.

Here’s the second impact of caffeine. Beware the cup of coffee (or any choice from Starbucks) after three in the afternoon. Let that late-day caffeine hit take hold and you’re in for a long night. I can very dependably fall asleep within five minutes of hitting the pillow except when my coffee intake is late-day (and on that note, why is upscale after-dinner restaurant coffee so good?). I toss and turn like laundry in the wash cycle, staring at the ceiling and ruing my beverage mistake. Then I stare at the bedside clock. What a pretty clock it is. Such colorful numbers. It’s fun to watch the numbers change every minute. Every hour.

Let’s review. Assuming I plan my bathroom trips and lay off the coffee by mid-day, I can safely embrace my caffeine habit. And if “habit” concerns me at all – its synonyms include “addiction” after all – here’s some good news. Four cups a day is ideal for heart health, according to recent research by the Germans (my new favorite people). Not up to four cups, but exactly four cups, netting you about 300 mg of caffeine. Four cups is also the equivalent of a Starbucks “Venti” (the Nitro cold brew somehow packs in 469 mg of caffeine) but I steer clear of the big cups. Wouldn’t want to get “addicted”.

We’ve only been talking about coffee here, but thankfully caffeine is found in only a handful of other foods and drinks. What starts as a naturally-occurring compound in plants finds its way to teas, cocoa, cola soft drinks, energy drinks, and over-the-counter meds (i.e. cough syrup). The only one I touch is cocoa (my chocolate habit justifies its own blog post). So, unless I exceed my daily two-square ration of a Lindt 70% Cocoa Excellence Bar, my caffeine intake is all about coffee.

If you count milligrams the way you count calories, know that 300 of caffeine is the threshold to avoid anxiety and panic attacks. A warning sign might as well pop up after 300 saying, “STOP! Proceed with caution”. It’s like there’s this sweet spot with coffee – an oasis between falling asleep in church and earning the jitters – that kindles my fire. Gives me justification to start every day with a cup of coffee. Or four.

Precisely Enchanting

If you watched any of the Winter Olympics the past couple weeks, you witnessed dramatic moments only the Games can deliver. Some literally took my breath away: the edge-of-your-seat overtime shootout in the women’s hockey final (a 3-2 win by the Americans); the exquisite battle for gold between the highly-touted Russians in women’s figure-skating; and the first-ever victory for the U.S. in the team sprint of women’s cross-country skiing, where Jessie Diggins’ come-from-behind lunge at the finish line took the gold by 0.18 of a second.

Consider “0.18 of a second” (for a second). The blink of an eye takes twice as long. Now consider measuring 0.18 of a second. Remarkably, we’ve had the technology to do so since the 1950’s. For the Olympics, that precision was provided by Omega, the watch manufacturer from Switzerland. Of course the timekeepers were Swiss. What other country is so renowned for the keeping of time? What other country coordinates forty-six individual railway companies on a single network of tracks, bringing its trains into the stations on-time every time? Where else in the world would you feel more confident banking your cash? Six years ago, Omega developed technology capable of measuring one-millionth of a second. At the Pyeongchang Olympics they used a photo-finish camera capable of ten thousand snaps per-second. The Swiss redefine “attention to detail”.

I’ve had an affection for Switzerland from a very young age. As a kid, my introduction took place in subtle ways. Shirley Temple’s “Heidi” was based in Switzerland. The Switzer brand of red/black licorice (still available in “vintage” candy stores) was a frequent purchase. The cute little Swiss Miss in our pantry beckoned me to hot chocolate. As a Boy Scout, I always carried one of the Victornox Swiss army knives. At Disneyland I roller-coasted through a scaled-down replica of the Matterhorn – one of the Alps. I had my first taste of fondue. And for a Suisse exclamation point, I consumed a ton of that “holiest” of cheeses. My ancestry test should’ve produced a little Swiss DNA, don’t you think?

As an adult, Switzerland’s products are no less present in my life. Lindt is my favorite chocolate (and I’ve tried my fair share of chocolate). A Rolex watch is still the material equivalent of corporate-America success (though my tastes are more modest – perhaps a Swatch [Swiss-watch]?) Velcro can be found on several items in my wardrobe. Haagen Daz is my favorite brand of ice cream (a product of the Swiss company Nestlé). And a lengthy search for “adult” Swiss licorice led me to Chateau D’Lanz, a family-run business in Washington state producing some of the best.

Speaking of Nestlé, the Toll House chocolate-chip cookie recipe is also one of my favorites. Here’s a bit of trivia: Toll House was an inn in Whitman, Massachusetts. Ruth Graves Wakefield is credited with inventing the chocolate chip cookie (by mistake) somewhere nearby the Toll House. The price Nestlé paid for the right to Ruth’s recipe? A lifetime supply of Swiss chocolate.

Now speaking of Velcro, here’s another bit of trivia. George de Mestral was a Swiss engineer and amateur mountaineer from the 1940’s. Hiking in the Alps one day, George noticed seeds kept sticking to his clothes and to his dog’s fur. When he returned home, George developed a synthetic “sticking” technology like what he’d found in nature; a hook-and-loop zipper alternative eventually patented as Velcro. The clever name is a child of the French parents velours (velvet) and crochet (hook).

Okay, we’ve covered Swiss precision and some world-class products, but I haven’t addressed what makes Switzerland so fetching. How’s this for starters: the entire country can fit within the greater Dallas/Ft. Worth area. Bordered by France, Italy, and Austria, the Swiss are typically fluent in French, Italian, and German; as well as their home-country language of Romansh. Switzerland produces some of the best in skiing, snowboarding, and mountain-climbing (of course), but also tennis? (hello, Roger Federer).

Here’s some more Swiss charm. The colorful Guards in the Vatican City are the only foreign military service permitted to its citizens. Switzerland’s “non-interference policy” dictates its only participation in foreign wars is typically through the high-profile benevolence of its Red Cross organization. And citizenship in this fair country? You’d better hope you have blood ties through birth or marriage. Otherwise it’ll take twelve years of a special-residency permit, combined with a long-term work visa.

Despite my obvious affection, I should probably stay away from precisely enchanting Switzerland. It’s a real country like any other after all, which means not everything comes up roses. Perhaps I’ll cling to my snow-globe impression of the Suiss Alpenland instead: a gentle people living high on the Happiness Scale; the cleanest and quaintest cities imaginable; cobble-stoned streets and chalet-like houses. The magnificent Alps serve as the backdrop, their slopes ascended by rickety cog railways and descended by skillful skiers. Listen for an accordion or a little yodeling. Look carefully enough into my globe and you might even notice the von Trapp family, marching down the mountain trail from Austria, singing their do-re-mi song.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.