Tag: artisan chocolates

Small Bites: 3 new haut chocolates from Vosges and 100 top wines for $15 or less

Vosges Haut-Chocolat introduces three new flavors for fall. And Wine Enthusiast Magazine releases its Top 100 Best Buys for 2012.

Dessert with a capital D is only a sometime thing here at Blue Kitchen, but we do like to keep chocolate on hand. Just a square or two after dinner gives the meal a sweet finish without committing to a big, calorie-laden slice or scoop of anything. So when artisanal chocolatier Vosges Haut-Chocolat invited us to join its VIP Blogger Program, we were more than happy to oblige.

A couple of perks of the program are preview announcements of new flavors and—more to the chocolate-loving point—occasional samples of those new flavors. Case in point are three new chocolate bars for fall. Continue reading “Small Bites: 3 new haut chocolates from Vosges and 100 top wines for $15 or less” →

Small Bites: Snow cones, cocktails and seven pounds of chocolate

Snow cones going artisanal with small batch syrups is the subject of my latest USA Character Approved Blog post. And Marion and I are asked to judge chocolate. Lots of it.

Snow cones are a primal summer pleasure. I remember staring at the spouted bottles of colorful syrup at the snow cone stand as a kid, agonizing over my flavor choice. If the stand allowed you two flavors (or sometimes even three! three!), the decision became exponentially harder.

Now a former Chicago restaurateur is making the decision a lot more interesting. Melissa Yen used to run one of our favorite weekend breakfast haunts, Vella Café. Frustrated by the limited choices in syrups for flavoring coffee for the café, she started experimenting with her own. Out of those caffeine-fueled adventures, Jo Snow Syrups was born. Continue reading “Small Bites: Snow cones, cocktails and seven pounds of chocolate” →