Whatsit Wednesday - Chocolate

“Chocolate is cheaper than therapy and you don’t need an appointment.” One of many memes or sayings you can find about chocolate. When chocolate is brought up in the US, it most often has to do with hot chocolate or chocolate chip cookies or some kind of syrup put on ice cream. Nobody is happy when the bite into a chocolate chip cookie and find out that it is actually an oatmeal raisin cookie. 

But if you want chocolate, Belgium is the place to be. The Netherlands has its own storied past as well - putting chocolate spread and chocolate sprinkles on bread - but it is Belgium that continues its love and obsession to this day. Chocolate comes from cacao beans, after all, which come from Congo, which was a Belgian colony. So it seems the Belgians colonized Africa for chocolate. I think most chocolate lovers can understand that perfectly. 

In Belgium, chocolate means pralines. Pralines come in a box. They are all shapes and sizes. They can be milk, white or pure and can come with gooey insides or smooth insides. Brand names like Leonidas, Guylian (the seashells and sea horses), Neuhaus (in Grand Central Station NY) and Godiva offer premium chocolate. You can even go to a special store to buy chocolates - a ‘chocolatey”. Mind you, for a Belgian, not just anything can be called chocolate. 

Years ago, a newspaper revealed that Cadbury’s was not made with cocoa butter. It was basically a bunch of sugar. Belgians were incensed. In 2007 Hershey and Nestle tried to convince the FDA in the US to allow them to use partially hydrogenated vegetable oil instead of cocoa butter and still call their product “chocolate”. 

So Belgians can be chocolate snobs, which is fine with me. I am one of those people who only likes dark chocolate - called “pure” here. I do not consider white chocolate to be chocolate and milk chocolate makes my tummy do loops. But dark chocolate (pure! Yummmm) just makes the day better. What do you like best and what do you consider a chocolate treat?