Piano music

Feb 6, 2007

Happy birthday to my brother, Nick, working his way toward a job with a fire department out in Arizona. Matt, meanwhile, is past the halfway point in the police academy. I’m proud of both of them for pursuing their dreams.

I’m sitting in 3CUPS at the moment, waiting for the chocolate tasting to begin. Nice piano jazz on the sound system. (And there’s free wifi in this far corner of the shop!)

Quick note about the food blogging tour we’re hatching: I was about to contact Lynne Rossetto Kasper of The Splendid Table to invite her to North Carolina this summer, but then I heard on the WUNC on-air capital campaign that Rossettoo Kasper is coming to Chapel Hill to attend a dinner with some of the area’s top chefs. $2500 gets you into that dinner. We’ll still consider a similar event for the food blogging tour, and we’ll try to get a big name or two and hold the tickets under $100.

I started 2007 with a pledge to eat no chocolate in January, and I kept to that resolution and even extended it through the end of February. But I’ve granted myself an exemption for tonight so I could attend a chocolate tasting at 3CUPS. (Badi tells me the shop has bagged a very high score in a coffee rating publication; more about this when I find out the details.)

Tasting to begin … “We have a lot of chocolate to taste in the next hour.”

This was a fun, and tasty, event. Jonathan Wallace knows his chocolate. He had us taste six different and delicious chocolates tonight, from Valrhona and Francois Pralus. My nose and taste buds weren’t very sensitive tonight, and so my tasting notes mention marshmallow and green tea and liver and evergreen. Still, I savored every bit of the satiny chocolate.

Anton Zuiker ☄