Lovely, lovely things

Chocolate tastings and exotic salts are tres trendy these days. But I'm not one of those people to stop enjoying something I love simply because "everyone's" talking about it. Salt is so essential, and chocolate is so devine, and that's that.

This afternoon, a coworker splayed out an assortment of interesting bars that she'd picked up at Cost Plus, and one of them just blew me away. Vosges Chocolate makes the Barcelona Bar - "deep" milk chocolate (a milk chocolate-dark chocolate blend; no foodie snooty nose sniffing, milk chocolate is gooood!), delicate, hickory smoked almond bits, and grey sea salt. Ohhh la la, I fear I may become Augustus Gloop. One flavor gives way to the next ... you can practically see fireworks in my eyeballs as the various pleasure centers in my brain light up.

Yes, of course I know about all the hot little chocolate shops springing up across town. Meh. I can get chocolate and new napkin rings and Valentine tchotchkes at Cost Plus.