Wildflowers!

I'd been wanting to go on a trip to see the wildflowers since the season started in March but we just hadn't found a good opportunity to go. But then, unexpectedly, we both ended with Friday off! So I hastily planned a wildflower trip.

We headed up the coast to Santa Ynez and while we were driving into where the flowers were supposed to be, we met some bulls. They were friendly bulls.

Our first wildflower stop was very windy. But pretty!

The hills are alive...

Even though it was still pretty early, the moon was up. And you can see how green everything looks, which is unusual for Southern California. In a couple months and for the rest of the year, this'll all be brown...

Our next stop didn't have any flowers when we got there, so we had to hike down the trail a little.

We could see there were more wildflowers beyond, but never quite hiked that far.

Our last stop was the wildflowery-est.

And look, we got one picture together! We asked some other people to take a picture for us (all our other stops there were no other people). We never have any pictures of us actually together.

When we were driving back, we turned a corner and there was this cow by the side of the road!

We stopped at Solvang, which was nearby, on the way home. It's the cutest town ever. It was founded by Danes. And it's like you fell into the most adorable part of Denmark.

This is me eating a truffle.

And an Easter cookie.

We managed to take this picture of ourselves by holding the camera in front us. We look a little silly but it works.

This hopping kid was randomly painted on this pole. It made it me hop.

All in all, a delightful, unexpected day off. A great way to beat the crowds that would be all over wildflower-land on the weekends. Nothing beats a day of cows and flowers.

About Us: Chocolate Snobs

I never liked chocolate very much, even as a kid. I particularly disliked dark chocolate -- at least what I thought was dark chocolate. But shopping at Whole Foods, they often have a wall of gourmet chocolate by the register and Matt, who likes chocolate just fine, would occasionally get one. And I would go on about how I don't like dark chocolate. But then, one fateful day, I also had a bite. And curiously, it did not taste like what I expected. Real dark chocolate is something all together different.

Real dark chocolate only requires two ingredients: cocoa mass and sugar. But the only company we know who actually makes chocolate that way is Domori from Italy. Usually the ingredients will consist of cocoa mass, cane sugar, cocoa butter, vanilla (and perhaps the emulsifier lecithin). That should be it.

Last year, Hershey's and Nestle lobbied the FDA to change the legal definition of chocolate, so they don't have to actually have chocolate in them. They also often have milk in them and real dark chocolate doesn't have milk. So yeah, that's not what we're talking about here.

In the gourmet chocolate world, some chocolate is 'cru' which is a term picked up from wine connoisseurs, meaning all the cacao comes from a single origin. These are the best (and generally most expensive) chocolates.

There is a fairly new award given to the best chocolate of the year from the Academy of Chocolate. Since they started the award in 2006, best dark chocolate bar has gone to an Amedei. The first year was to their Amedei Chuao bar, which is also considered the best bar by seventypercent.com -- a well known chocolate website.

We would agree. It's the best we've had. It's the the king of dark chocolate bars. The taste is very subtle and reveals different layers of flavor as it sits in your mouth. (If that doesn't sound like chocolate snob talk I don't know what does).

But if you are not used to artisan chocolate, a good place to start might be the Amedei Porcelana, which is in some ways the opposite of Chuao. It doesn't have the complexity of flavor of the Chuao, but is very smooth and consistent and just tastes really really good. It's easily the best tasting dark bar in existence for just regular taste. We still prefer the layers of the Chuao, but this is a good starter bar for someone who wants to know what dark chocolate can taste like and may not have developed much of a palate for it yet. Unfortunately, it's also the most expensive bar we've come across. It retails around $15 a bar. The Chuao is usually around $12 a bar.

Amedei vs. Valrhona -- for some reason we find Valrhona Cru kind of difficult to find, despite being probably the most well known gourmet company. For instance, the regular Valrhona dark, but not Cru, is fairly easy to find -- they always have it at Trader Joes for instance for about $4, but is not really much to write home about. We were fortunate to receive a truly awesome present from my sister, a wooden box, not unlike a cigar box, with several bars of 3 different kinds of Cru.

The Valrhona chocolate consistency and texture is kind of awesome. And it definitely beats Amedei on that front. But as for taste, I'd definitely have to go with Amedei. Matt leans a little toward Valrhona.

When we went to Italy, we came back with a bag full of chocolate bars (we actually still have one Domori left). I expect France will be somewhat similar.

But next we're going to try some of the American gourmet chocolates. There's a couple companies that are getting noticed such as Amano and Guittard. Always more chocolate to try!

I keep a chocolate journal, like wine connoisseur sometimes keep a wine journal, and we partially want a wine cooler just to keep the chocolate in (it is generally best kept at a similar temperature). We keep our chocolate in a cooler at the moment, to keep the temperature as best we can. So as you can see, we are totally chocolate snobs. But it's something we enjoy doing together!