Chocolate is a lot like wine in many ways. If you want to get a taste of a place you can drink the wine or eat the chocolate. Thanks to my sister I now know what the region of her new home tastes like. She brought me some good Ecuadorian chocolate from her region and it has a nice sweet fruity flavor. Like cherries or berries. Like it is grown in a field that used to grow those fruits. It also has a nice earthy flavor like a mild coffee. It is almost like eating a sunny day, walking through the chocolate grove, eating jam on toast and drinking a small cup of coffee.
Culinary regionalism is one of the best ways to experience the world without having to leave your home. There was one week a couple years ago where we made a meal from a different country every night for a week. We should get back to meal planning and menus at home because I haven’t made dinner enough recently.
The problem is, somewhat, buying meat in bulk. Now I have a ton of chicken breast, and while it is versatile and can be used for many dishes it is also chicken, and chicken after chicken after chicken can get somewhat boring. I do think trying different regional cuisines would help liven things up, and planning menus and thinking about dinner is better than thinking about anything else right now.
The problem is I have started to take or we have started to have more evening appointments and that makes it easier to grab fast food after soccer practice or eat out after a meeting than to cook at home. I need to get back to making certain times sacred on the calendar. Then we can start to appreciate the tastes of the world.
David Huzzard Writes 