Wednesday, July 04, 2007

Three Cheers for Chocolate!

The good news is that eating dark chocolate eases blood pressure a little bit. It contains those lovely polyphenols that certain red wines contain in quantity too. I can forsee a wonderful diet... For the moment, the dark chocolate I eat is revived Bourneville which, for some obscure reason was ditched by Cadbury's some years ago, and has been resurrected due to the increased demand for dark chocolate.

You can just imagine the brainstorming session at Cadbury's:
Youthful Keen Bean Manager: "Okay, today's task is to come up with a dark chocolate to add to the Cadbury's range. As you know, it's been proven to ease blood pressure... blah blah...".
5 minutes later...
Cynical Old Marketing Exec: "Well kid, you are too young to remember (sniggers from room)... but we had a dark chocolate."
YKBM: "Oh, really?"
COME: "Yeah. Bourneville."
YKBM: "Oh."
COME: "Great, meeting over. Back to work!"

The world's shortest product ideas meeting!

I used to love Bourneville, but, living in France, had not realised it had been withdrawn. I bought French or Swiss chocolate instead, as they were the ones on the shelves. Being quite rich though, it's difficult eating more than a very little, for me, anyway. Bourneville has a much smoother taste and this lends itself to pigging. Still, it's not available in the shops here so home stock levels depend very much on trips back to Blighty. This leads to rationing, which is probably a good thing, for la ligne...

Talking of which... as I'm off today. It's Independence Day in the US and while I might not give a shit at the origin of the holiday, it being a tad painful and all... I'm quite happy to benefit from the result. Having had my hair cut and dashed around buying artistic creative bits and bobs for the boys to enliven their summer holidays with, this afternoon I think I'll get my bike out and flex those thigh muscles.

I'd better take some chocolate just to keep my heart ticking over...

4 comments:

  1. I didn't know Bourneville had gone either! That was my Dad's favourite chocolate...

    Now and again I buy a bar of Bonnat chocolate. Bonnat is a local chocolatier (Voiron) and the 100% cocoa bar of chocolate is heavenly...smooth and not bitter at all. You could definitely pi out on that (I speak from experience, of course).

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  2. PIG not pi. I'm having trouble with my keyboard...

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  3. Well, gigi, you can rest assured now that you are doing your heart the world of good when you do pig out...

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  4. Ah, the culture of chocolate. Being surrounded by Belgium to the north and Switzerland to the east, we are able to indulge no end. Favorite spot is Maison du Chocolat. Those eclairs! Aside from the healthy attributes of [mainland] chocolate (how appropriate that Guinness also manages to gain a reputation as a health helper), the fact that we mostly only buy 70% cacao chez nous means that I have very little incentive to pig out. There just isn't the same compulsion as I used to have with my old favs ... flake, fruit & nut...).

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