Modern Vespa

At lunch today the topic of conversation turned to chocolate. Chocolate is kind of a big deal here.

Anyway, a few people mentioned their favorite brands... while others offered up the kind of confections, cakes and cookies they like as the vehicle for their chocolate. A couple of us who were originally from outside of Israel commented on the difference from country to country in the taste and consistency of chocolate.

It was actually a pretty enjoyable conversation, considering that it was an odd assortment of engineers, production workers and marketing types from across the socioeconomic and cultural spectrum.

Enjoyable, that is, until the know-it-all attorney who serves as our division's contracts manager chimed in with her pronouncement that "only dark chocolate is 'real' chocolate, and then only the dark chocolate with a high percentages of cocoa."

Nobody seemed in the mood to take her on, but it rubbed my the wrong way just enough that I asked her, "So you're saying that all those other products on the shelf calling themselves 'chocolate' are deliberately mislabeled? Sounds like you should think about filing some sort of a law suit to stop them from appropriating the name."

Apparently my sarcasm was too subtle for her, because she continued, "Milk chocolate has so little actual chocolate in it, I don't know how they get away with calling it chocolate at all!"

I just shrugged and told her I preferred milk chocolate and had no problem calling it chocolate... and hoped that she would take the hint and move on.

Of course not.

In an attempt to beat me into submission with historical citations, she started lecturing me about how high cocoa dark chocolate was the closest to the original chocolate brought to Europe from the America's by the conquistadors.

I'd had enough. My wife is a foodie and I know a thing or two about history. And I wasn't about to let her play fast and loose with either while insulting my preference.

I said, "First of all, there is pretty strong evidence that the Mayans enjoyed chocolate as a fermented beverage. And by the time the Aztecs got their hands on it, they were mixing it will all kinds of crap, including chile peppers. The stuff Cortez and his buddies introduced to Europe was a liquid concoction that none of us would recognize as chocolate, and even if we would recognize some similarity to modern chocolate, who says that the goal of enjoying modern chocolate is to come as close to the original Mesoamerican experience as possible?"

I'm sure she made some fascinating points after that, but I had work to do and took my tray and left the battlefield to miss know it all.

It's past midnight here and I'm still completely stumped by the fact that some people just don't get the whole concept of 'not everyone enjoys the same things'.

It's Human nature to want to be right, I think. Mis Know-It-All is probably at home either researching The History of Chocolate in order to set you straight, or telling her SO/friend about the boor who interrupted her today.

Potato Tomato, you know? Personally, I like plain M&M's.

Music, must be like chocolate:

I work for a very, very small musical publishing house. Once day we were discussing our favorite singers over lunch and basically I was told by my "musician" co-workers that my favorites singers were garbage.

They broke apart the music, the phrasing, the diction, the artistry. They stomped all over every musician and group I mentioned crying out, "How can you listen to that stuff! Ugh! I can't stand it!".

I said, "Well despite all of these many, many musical flaws, my favorite singers and groups still have millions of fans who enjoy their music and concerts. And how many fans enjoy yours?

BTW - they objected to Bette Midler, Loreena Mckennit, Earth, Wind and Fire and Tom Jones. To each his own I suppose, nothing like dealing with "experts".

Can we discuss "white" chocolate?

NO. I'm not *that* open.

I enjoy the story of Lindt chocolate. It's kind of like the story of Ivory soap.

I like all kinds of chocolate. I like eating chocolate while listening to Earth, Wind & Fire. Or Led Zeppelin or Funk or Carly Simon or Andrew Bird.

Lots of different tastes in lots of different things.

Your co-workers are idiots.

What strikes me as ironic it that not only does "not everyone" like the same stuff, I don't even like the same stuff that I used to.

Things I would have put forward and argued for thirty years ago have much less meaning now. Seems like if we can't even figure ourselves out, maybe we ought to not judge what's best for others.

And BTW I am both a fan of milk chocolate and dark chocolate. The both have their uses...

original or dark chocolate?

green ones have the best tasting coating.

Original. I like my chocolate waxy enough to make candles.

Speaking a music professional of 35 years standing, I have to agree. Your co-workers are idiots. Whether the artists you mentioned are to my taste or not, they deserve respect for their skills and musicality. Lots of intrumentalists know a lot about playing an instrument, and very little about music.

Check this out. To be considered chocolate the FDA says it can't have more than 5% of cocoa butter substitute. That being said Hershey's makes a Special Dark Chocolate that isn't made with cocoa butter. I'm willing to bet she would like this and consider it chocolate...

I love chocolate. Almost any chocolate. That said, I used to love Hershey bars, but now they taste waxy and soapy.

Reminds me of some threads that pop up here once in a while where someone insists that Vespas should not have any accessories that alter the "wasp" look e.g. Top case.

Trepp-

I'm confident that she would be equally annoying and just as much a "know it all" if she didn't have a law degree.

Just saying. . . .

I agree. I don't have a law degree and I'm an annoying know-it-all.

To each his own is probably the closest thing I have to a core philosophy in life, and I do the best I can to adhere to it. Unfortunately, the internet would grind to a halt pretty quickly if everyone lived by it.

Brendan

What? They didn't like Tom Jones? Well, it's not unusual...

She sounds like a real a-- hole and I don't even like chocolate. Have you thought of giving her the old laxative in a candy bar gift Just make sure it's "real" chocolate.

Love it!

I weaned myself off sweet foods a while back ( I had a cold and could not taste whether or not I had sugar in my coffee so I stopped using it). Now one little piece of chocolate is all I can handle. I follow it with a glass of water. Same applies to any modern comestibles that are largely sugar.

i have tried all the fancy chocolates and still my favorite is a good hershey chocolate be it hershey kisses, a bar etc. I like it a bit more with nuts or fruit in it, like M & M peanuts, raisinets, a hershey almond bar, etc. It is my only sweat weakness. Many lawyers can be a pain they are just too full of themselves. I guess it goes with the territory. I could go on and on about that but this is not the place to do it.

I feel you Trepp. I know a couple of people who have this "i know it all", "i am right, you are wrong", "what i use is best, what you use is crap" mentality. I use the "Just walk away" button - its a waste of my time to put forth any argument cause it will never end. But once in a while, like you, i do get the urge to set the record straight.

But having said all that, you know what - people like that lose friends fast. People either stay away or ignore them even in casual setting for obvious reasons.

Chacun a son gout

To each, their own taste.


[Ok,ok, I know I omitted the accents.]

Chocolate and Red Chili are great together! In My Opinion. When it's not too sweet. like chicken mole R

I like dark chocolate, though I have always liked M&Ms.

So I thought I would love Dark Chocolate M&Ms.

Turns out not so much.

I love dark chocolate and regular M&Ms.

Go figure.


Anyway, Trepp, I know the type - I've even been that way myself, though, thankfully, not for a long time. I believe I've grown out of it. Even back then I was aware of the ridiculousness of those types of arguments.

<-- Has tried lots and lots of dark chocolate

<--- Still doesn't like it very much

Yep, besides she's a corporate lawyer and everyone knows real lawyers are litigators.

(So says she who did federal litigation for years but now rarely appears in a courtroom. )

Now I'm going to have to detour to the kitchen and break off a piece of the 83% cocoa bar I've got stashed in there, far enough away I won't just nibble on it.

Mmm... nothing like a good mole sauce... washed down with a Margarita.

Not too close to bedtime, though!

I work at LAX in the international terminal. You know how airports have gift shops that sell local stuff for the tourists to take back home to give as gifts, we have a bunch of See's Candies kiosks that are very prominent and sell tons of their chocolates. They are an L.A. institution and have been around for over 90 years.

I talk to a lot of passengers from Switzerland who are getting ready to board a flight back home and love kidding with them since the Swiss are so famous for their chocolate. I'll ask how was their vacation, where did you go, did you see any movie stars? Then I'll spring on them, "So did you get a couple of boxes of See's Chocolates to take home for your friends, you know they are really good?" Then there is an awkward silence, an embarrassed smile will creep on their face as they try to figure a way to politely tell me that our chocolate isn't up to their standard. It's pretty funny.

On the flip side passengers to India, China, and the Philippines have their carry on bags stuffed to overflowing with Heshey's and Nestles candy bars.

Or hot strong coffee. R

Yeah. . What she said. . .

i love choco too....all sorts.
i became a teenager in 1966 and our family had just moved to germany, so things got to rocking pretty fast over there.
but "old people music"?...not so much...i have heard it so many times...i'm afraid it is just boring now[to me]...show biz muzak?...bleeeeh
i was never a fan of sinatra/presley/midler...none of it. i don't think there is one song in my library of anything that resembles the tunes my folks listened to in the 50's-60's.
i cringe when mardi gras season rolls around...the same tired old tunes year in and out.
booooorrrrrrrring

Just so it's clear I'm not using this thread to take a swing at lawyers, I didn't mention her profession for any reason other than it is my habit to try to flesh out characters in any story so the reader doesn't have to guess at too much. I could tell you stories about some of the engineers that would make you think I had an axe to grind against them.

But since it was mentioned, she is a former litigator who moved to contract law when she got married and started having kids because the hours were more predictable. So yeah, I think she likes a good argument and probably doesn't get to do it enough these days.

Or is it the other way around.....
We all like what we like.

Vanilla is where the party's at.

We make our own vanilla extract. Three vanilla beans (slightly scored with a knife) in a 750ml bottle of vodka (some prefer bourbon) turns into excellent extract in about a month.

In addition to cooking/baking with it, I like to add a splash of vanilla extract to a screwdriver (orange juice & vodka) which makes it taste like a Creamsicle® .

We also make homemade ice cream and use the extract for that.

So yeah, vanilla rocks.

Several years ago, I had a contract to design a house for one of the wealthiest families in Jacksonville. I had one meeting on their yacht in Palm Beach, another in their art filled historic house in Savannah.

At one meeting the couple took me and my then partner and his then wife to dinner in Savannah.

At dinner, Mrs. Koger offered a discussion she had with her friends regarding chocolate.

She was with two of her friends when the discussion of chocolate came up. The first was talking about her favorite chocolate, a very expensive European brand that was available in only the finest shops.

The second had a similar story about her favorite, again expensive and exclusive.

Mrs. Koger then stated to the others that her favorite chocolate was "Tootsie Rolls"

We all got a good laugh out of that one.

I didn't notice this until I was stationed in Germany, and got a taste of several chocolates from across Europe.

They don't like Earth, Wind and Fire? I suppose that's the way of the world....