my cousin gave me a vosges exotic candybar gift set for christmas. (yes, for those of you saying christmas hasn’t happened yet, and aren’t you a nonpracticing jew anyway, or maybe a unitarian, no wait, you’re not anything, religious-wise, you shouldn’t be celebrating christmas to begin with! anyway, for you, my family does this pre-christmas one-person-one-gift affair where as much of the extended family as can get together does. the cousin in question drove in from chicago. that’s a helluva drive. anyway, back to the chocolate.)

wow. i’m eating two squares of the calindia bar. indian green cardamom, organic california walnuts, dried plums, venezuelan dark chocolate. (we’ll ignore the annoying marketing fad of calling prunes “dried plums” for now.) it. is. chocolate heaven. and i thought i wouldn’t like it, being that i’m not a huge cardamom fan. and they’re biiiiig squares. (standard size bar, though.)