Almond Beverage Chocolate Bar

One thing we really like about Trader Joe's is that they keep coming out with more and more vegan and dairy-free products. This almond beverage chocolate bar ($2.99 for 2.5 oz) is one of those, substituting almond beverage (almond flour and water, basically almond milk but you can't say milk!) for the milk, great for people who are vegan or lactose-intolerant. The chocolate was creamy and tasted like a regular milk chocolate bar, which is good since that seemed to be what they were going for. We didn't really taste any almond flavor to it at all.

Buy again? Sure, if we were in the mood for a chocolate bar. I didn't eat that much of it, since I'm not a huge plain chocolate fan, but A thought it was a good substitute for milk chocolate if you wanted something without dairy.

Joe-Joe's Truffles

How is it already February?! We haven't posted all year, and we haven't even finished writing up our 2017 favorite food memories. It's been incredibly busy and chaotic as we prepare for our move, but there's so much we've wanted to write about (or needed to, so we don't forget our rapidly fading memories), whether it's trip recaps or our favorite food memories from last year or my thoughts on abandoning the 52 week cooking challenge. Need to start creating a good habit again and exercising that creative writing part of our brains, and Trader Joe's reviews seem like a good way to dive back in.

Last year, in an attempt to cut down on food waste, I started making lists of all of our food and their respective expiration dates. As a result, we often end up eating our snacks close to their expiration date, because (a) we have a backlog of too many snack foods and (b) we often forget about things until they turn up on the list as close to expiring when they get buried or put away out of sight. That was the case with these Joe-Joe's truffles that we apparently picked up last April, but I thought was much, much more recent than that. (Time is flying.)

Anyway, we were intrigued by the Joe-Joe's truffles, because we have tried just about every variety of Joe-Joe's cookies. These combine the traditional chocolate vanilla Joe-Joe's, crumbled, with more creme from inside the cookies and white chocolate, and then have a coating of dark chocolate and pastel sprinkles. (Now that I'm reading the description again, April makes so much more sense. Pastel sprinkles, Easter candy, that whole thing.) They came in a box of 12 with each truffle separated, and other than having less sprinkles, looked pretty close to what was on the box design. We really liked these. They actually tasted like Joe-Joe's cookies, but in a softer, chewier, far less crumbly form. Texturally, they were basically like cake pops without sticks. A wondered if they might have tasted fresher or different months ago, but they were still quite good and didn't taste that old like some other chocolate we've had close to its expiration date. Not sure if these will be back this spring, but if they are, it might be our springtime treat!

Buy again? Probably. They would be more of a treat purchase for us than a regular thing (we definitely don't need more snacks or chocolate to add to the list), but since they're seasonal (if they return at all), a once-a-year treat sounds good to us.

St Maarten Food Souvenirs

Other than Christmas ornaments, we don't generally bring home many souvenirs from our trips other than food. We didn't know much about what food souvenirs there would be in St. Maarten other than chocolate, since M's parents brought home chocolate from each of their past trips, and guavaberry liqueur, since M's parents also gave us a little bottle of that after one of their visits.

There was a guavaberry "colada and rum shop" right at the port where you could buy souvenirs and also get some samples. Even though M's parents had brought us something guavaberry before, we hadn't actually gotten around to opening it, so we didn't know what it tasted like. We gladly tried the small frozen drink sample, and found it sweet and refreshing (we think). Two years later, not really sure how to describe the flavor other than we liked it but didn't feel compelled to buy any.

The chocolate shop M's parents like is called The Belgian Chocolate Box. It was amusing to see a Belgian style chocolate shop in St. Maarten of all places, but the owner of the shop apparently studied chocolate making in Belgium, and you can definitely tell when you eat them. We got a few bags of their dark chocolate. For lack of a better term, they're little pellets of dark chocolate that are amazingly rich and not too sweet. We also got a couple bags of chocolate covered rice crisps as we love that style of chocolate.

We had a good time in St. Maarten. We were only there through the afternoon, so hitting the beach, watching the planes, having lunch, strolling the town, and buying chocolate was pretty much all we had time for. We walked back to the ship from the Philipsburg beach area soon after buying our chocolate (didn't want it to melt!) and then got on the North Star, a capsule-like thing on the ship that elevated you high enough to get good views, at dusk to say goodbye to St. Maarten before dinner. It was a nice first visit!

Brugge Food and Drink Touring

6 years ago today we did some food tourism while on our travels in Brugge, Belgium. The two places we ended up seeing were Brouwerij De Halve Maan, the local brewery, and Chocolatier Dumon. Both places were very interesting to see and taste, and we were very happy to have done some local business sightseeing.

Having already gone to a local brewery in Amsterdam (twice), we wanted to get a tour of a local brewery in Brugge as well. De Halve Maan does brewery tours for a fee, currently €8.50. They're run in either Dutch, English, or French and run approximately 45 minutes. They also now offer an "XL tour" that includes a private beer tasting and tips on how to properly taste beer. This option wasn't available when we went, though, so we didn't get a chance to do it. Be warned that the brewery has a lot of stairs, some of which are steep and narrow, and the ceilings aren't always extremely high. I had to duck a lot to get in and out of places since I'm tall, but if you're like M and more vertically challenged, you probably won't notice.

The tour itself was interesting for me. I always enjoy hearing about the history of breweries, and this one is especially old (established in 1856). It was also very interesting to see how the brewery adapted to fit into the building they were housed in to maximize space usage while also providing adequate facilities to brew the beer.

At the end of the tour they give you a glass of their Brugse Zot Blond in their restaurant/tasting room. They describe it as: "Brugse Zot Blond is a golden blond beer with a rich foam collar and a fruity yet spicy bouquet. The beer is brewed with four different kinds of malt and two aromatic varieties of hop which give the beer its inimitable taste."

I don't remember much about the beer, but I do recall that I had ordered one recently at a restaurant since it was local. What I do remember is that it was crisp and refreshing but without much of the hoppiness that I've come to love in recent years. It was refreshing and a perfect end to the tour.

After the brewery tour we went to Chocolatier Dumon, a chocolate store that I believe is famous as I had heard of it prior to doing any research into Brugge. That could be an entirely false memory, but I definitely remember hearing of it long before we went. Regardless, whether or not my potentially false memory had anything to do with it, I'm glad we made the visit. The smell of chocolate hits you as soon as you step in the door, and the lady working behind the counter was very patient to answer all of our questions and also offer samples. They had a special Ecuadorian dark chocolate that they had just gotten in of late, and the sample we had was amazing. In the end we opted to purchase a sample box full of a lot of their chocolates (white, dark, and milk) including a piece of the special Ecuadorian. It was supposed to come with a marzipan piece as well, but M mentioned that she wasn't (at that time) a fan of marzipan. The lady was very nice and offered to substitute another piece of the Ecuadorian in its place, and we were more than happy to accept.

We really enjoyed our time in Brugge a lot, and this day of local food tourism was incredibly enjoyable. It's so great to sample locally made specialties when we travel, and we definitely recommend visiting both if you have the time.

Chocolate Marbles

I have no idea when we bought these chocolate marbles from Trader Joe's. We put them away in our "snack box," and then I found them again a few weeks ago during a periodic clean-out looking for expired food. By that point, they were "best by" the end of May, so a little old, but we figured they were still safe enough to eat. We had been pretty excited to try these chocolate marbled truffles imported from France, and I really loved the marbled design.

Each color was a different flavor. Green was almond praline, orange was hazelnut praline, blue was chocolate mousse, white was coconut, brown was caramel, and yellow was crispy cookie. I knew the flavors, but A tried them blindly to see if he could figure out which flavor was which. (He is better at that than I am.) Unfortunately (and most likely due to their age), the flavors of the truffles weren't that distinguishable or recognizable for a lot of them. The chocolate mousse was probably one of the better ones, due to it just tasting like chocolate, and probably also the praline ones. They may have been better if they had been fresher, but can't turn back time to see if that's the case. We're not sure if these are still for sale, but considering we get a free monthly Godiva truffle, we probably wouldn't pick these up again even if they are.

Lesson learned though (again): Don't "save" treats. Just eat them!

DC Kickoff

A few months ago, we went on a short road trip to DC. We just needed to get out of the city for a little bit (although we did really just end up in a different city), and thought some time in a new environment, hanging out around pandas, and eating Ethiopian food would do us some good.

The morning we left for DC, it snowed a little bit, but fortunately that didn't screw up our drive too much. We left a little later than we planned, but made good time driving through Jersey. As a quick snack to start the trip, we decided to split some crispy M&M's that we had picked up from Target not long before. The bag was 99 cents for very few M&M's but it had been so long since I had had crispy M&M's that I couldn't resist picking up a bag.

The crispy M&M's had been back on the shelves for about a year already, but we hadn't gotten around to getting them. I think part of the reason we like them is the crispiness, that inner wafer-like center, and an overall texture reminiscent of a malt ball. But I think another part of it is also nostalgia. They hadn't had crispy M&M's for a decade or so, and we remembered them (and that age) fondly. The M&M's were fine, just not really a whole lot of them for the price, but it was nice to have them again.

We were planning to grab lunch in Maryland, but we were getting really hungry around Trenton so we decided to stop at a rest stop for a snack. Burger King seemed like the easiest option for something quick and not too heavy, and they had recently come out with jalapeño chicken fries, so we got a box of those as well as the onion rings I can never resist from BK.

We had tried regular chicken fries at Burger King before, and while we thought they were fine, we never thought they were amazing or anything really special. But these jalapeño chicken fries were different. They were so much better. You could taste the difference in the flavor and there was a definite jalapeño taste and sourness to them (in a good way). We weren't sure what the dipping sauce was supposed to be since no one gave us one with the box of chicken fries (no one really seemed to want to do much of anything at that BK), so we're not sure how well the sauce would complement the fries. But we liked these chicken fries and would get them again if they're still around.

As we sat at the rest stop for our break, we couldn't take our eyes off the news. That was the day that they had discovered a knife near OJ's old property, and it was partway through the season of The People v. OJ Simpson, and we were completely obsessed. Eventually we finished our fried snacks and tore ourselves away from the screen to get back on the road. It was a good thing we had stopped for a snack since we unfortunately hit a fair amount of congestion heading into Delaware, and we would have been so hungry if we had waited until Maryland to eat (and probably would have had even more buyer's remorse; more on that next). We were pretty happy with our snack, and more than anything, happy to start vacation!

Dark Chocolate Covered Peaberry Coffee Beans

So as a lover of all things coffee related, I had to try Trader Joe's Dark Chocolate Covered Peaberry Coffee Beans. For those of you that don't know, peaberry coffee is special, round beans that are the rarest form of coffee. Typical coffee fruit pods produce two beans which is why one side is flat, but peaberries develop as single beans and are completely round. My first thought when seeing these was interest but also a little disappointment that Trader Joe's would "waste" such a rare and delicious coffee bean on a sweet treat. However, I decided to be as open minded as possible while trying them in an attempt to be as objective as possible.

I tend to only eat one or two at a time since this is usually something of a sweet caffeine supplement for me in the afternoon. I drink so much coffee during the day as it is that I probably should never be eating these, but whatever. Flavor-wise they aren't much different than any other chocolate covered coffee I've had in the past, but the dark chocolate is clearly of good quality. I like these as a quick, sweet jolt of caffeine for the post-lunch energy dip, but I still think it's a waste to use good peaberry beans. Save that stuff for actual brewing.

Buy again? Nope. Tasty treat, but a waste of good beanage. I feel like my not buying is a protest to that.

Maltesers

On our recent trip to London, M and I were very interested in the candy sections as we've always heard about the amazing chocolates and candies you can get in Europe but not here in the US. We'd confirmed that all of the Haribo gummies taste better in Europe so we figured we should try some of their chocolates too. My coworker is originally from London, and the one candy she asked for was Maltesers. Since she liked them so much we figured we should get some too.

"To share"

Photo Credit: Wikipedia

My initial impression was that they were very similar to Whoppers but on the less sweet side. Growing up, I loved Whoppers and malted milk balls as a whole. Maltesers were so much better than anything we have here. The malted interior is much lighter and airier so it's an easier bite. The lessened sweetness also makes them easier to eat as well. That was a bit of a problem because had I not actually forced myself to stop, I would have inhaled the entire package. M liked them too, but not nearly as much as I did. Now that I've found Maltesers, I feel like I can't go back to Whoppers. I think the only thing I might like more is if they made a dark chocolate version of these. I'm going to have to ask people who go to London to bring me more of these from now on.

Nordic Delicacies

One year ago today, we went over to Nordic Delicacies in Bay Ridge intending to have some lunch for the Norway portion of our WorldEats quest. Nordic Delicacies was pretty much the last Norwegian shop in an area that used to be known as Little Norway, and we had heard the sad news that they would be closing at the end of the month after serving the community for decades. This could have been our last chance to get Norwegian food in NY (as it's harder to classify the restaurants that just call themselves Scandinavian by country for WorldEats), so we wanted to make an effort to get out there.

When we got there, it seemed pretty crowded and the shelves weren't very full. It was clear that a lot of people had stopped by for some final Norwegian treats in the weeks before they closed. But we weren't intending to buy groceries. Instead, we were more interested in their prepared foods. We had heard all about their herring and seafood salads and fish pudding and other dishes, and thought they'd make a good lunch.

Unfortunately the prepared food cases seemed to be mostly empty. It looked like the big group of people hanging out there were regulars and/or part of some Norwegian heritage group who were having a get-together or party at the store before they closed. That, combined with the fact that we had arrived on the later side for lunch, meant that there wasn't much of anything left. We were disappointed but understood. It's not like they were going to make a ton of food every day when they were planning to close soon.

Since this was really the only Norwegian option we'd come across in our research (other than occasional festivals and events at the Norwegian church), we decided the next best thing we could do would be to pick up some groceries and make them for WorldEats. It wasn't exactly what we intended for WorldEats, but we were at a Norwegian shop picking up Norwegian groceries for an at-home Norwegian dinner. Close enough (for now).

The first thing we picked up was a packet of fish soup. This was pretty much an instant soup packet - just add the powdered mixture to a pot, stir in some water and milk (or cream), bring it to a boil, and simmer it for about 10 minutes. The entire packet was written in Norwegian and I didn't translate it until right before I started to make it, so it was a good thing we had something other than water on hand. (This was a couple of months ago, so I'm only about 90% sure we used some leftover half and half from the salmon and leek soup and not milk.) As for the other ingredients in the packet, there was flour, milk, cornstarch, salt fish, sugar, carrot, onion, leek, celery, eggs, chives, and a few other things. We really liked the soup. It was creamy but not too heavy, and the flavors of the fish and vegetables were good. We paired it with some fish sticks for a nice dinner.

To finish off our Norwegian night, we dove into the other item we picked up from our Nordic Delicacies visit - a milk chocolate bar with chopped hazelnuts. This was a really high quality chocolate bar in our opinion. The chocolate was rich and creamy, and chocolate mixed with hazelnuts is one of our favorite flavors. This was quite good. The only way we could think of that this chocolate could have been better was if it were dark chocolate, but then it wouldn't have been as creamy.

Our Nordic Delicacies visit may not have gone the way we planned exactly, and we never got to try the prepared dishes that we hoped we would for WorldEats, but we did end up with a nice Norwegian night with real imported Norwegian products. We enjoyed our little mini exploration and hopefully will find another Norwegian place in the future to do some more WorldEats exploration.

Pre-Roast Snacks

We got a bit of a later start than we planned on the second day of our trip, our first full day in London. Originally we had thought that maybe we'd go out for a Sunday roast for lunch and then grab some beers while watching the Manchester derby, but we were so jet lagged and just plain exhausted. Also, the place we had targeted as our first choice for the roast, a pub called The Pig and Butcher, didn't have any reservations left, only some walk-in tables, so we figured there was no way we'd get out in time for the game. Turned out that missing the derby for the roast wasn't an awful thing since the game was pretty terrible.

We started the day with a breakfast bar (more on all of our breakfast bars in another post), and then eventually ventured out to load up our Oyster cards with weeklong passes and start exploring London. On our way to the train, we stopped by some people giving out free mini cans of Coke on the street. We're not sure if they were there because of the Rugby World Cup that was happening during our visit or some other reason, but we would see cans of Coke being given out all over the place during the week we were in London. The only not so great thing about it was that they always opened the can for you, meaning you couldn't save it to drink later.

We made our way over to Islington where the pub was and found out that the wait was about an hour and a half. After arriving in London, we had decided that we absolutely, 100% wanted to go for a Sunday roast in England (and this would be our only chance), so of course we decided to wait. It was about a half hour walk each way to the Emirates from the pub, so even though we're not Arsenal fans, we thought it would be a fun excursion while we waited for our table. We did get a little hungry along the way though, so it was good that we had packed some of the snacks we bought from Morrisons the day before.

For our pre-roast snack, we both split a couple of those Cadbury Dairy Milk Oreo bars. We've always been fans of the Milka Oreo bars, and this one was very similar, but it had a better shape. The Milka ones are flat, but these are sort of dome-shaped, so they have more filling. It was basically a milk chocolate shell with cookies and cream inside (although I guess we can say Oreo since it's actually co-branded thanks to their common Mondelez ownership). So good. It was creamy but not super heavy. We liked it so much that we went back to Morrisons and bought a couple more to bring home, since we were pretty sure we wouldn't be able to get these at home.

After a long walk around Islington, it was time for one of our favorite meals of the trip - our Sunday roast at The Pig and Butcher!

Chocolate Raspberry Baton

Another mini holiday snack we saw on a recent visit to Trader Joe's was this dark chocolate raspberry baton ($0.99). We weren't really sure what to expect. Would it be a regular chocolate bar with some bits of raspberry or some infused raspberry flavor? Would it be more like a chocolate jelly ring with some sort of chewy raspberry filling? Given my love for the raspberry jelly rings that always appear around Passover, I was hoping for the latter.

When I opened up the baton, I found that it was less a single "baton" and actually 6 pieces of linked chocolate. That made it much easier to divide. For some reason, at this point, I still thought there was going to be some sort of filling in each piece, but I was wrong. It was pretty much just dark chocolate with little bits of raspberry flecked throughout. Overall, it wasn't as sweet as we were expecting, as the raspberry flavor wasn't very strong. It mostly tasted like dark chocolate with small hints of raspberry.

Buy Again? Probably not. It was fine, but neither of us liked it enough to get another one.

Due Canestrelli

A couple of Trader Joe's visits ago, we saw a whole bunch of new holiday snacks, what looked to me like "stocking stuffer snacks," including this small package of due canestrelli ($0.79). Each package contained 2 chocolate filled chocolate wafers, and proclaimed that they were a traditional treat of Northwest Italy.

These wafer cookies were pretty good. The wafer part was light, soft and crispy, and the inside seemed like a thick layer of chocolate instead of a cream. The cookie overall had a bit of a chewy texture to it, but that made it better than some of the other wafer cookies we've had before.

Buy Again? If we're in the mood for wafer cookies, then yes. This was one of the better ones we've had. It probably won't be a regular purchase since we aren't addicted to wafer cookies, but they were good.

Chocolate Vegetable Tarts

For our second "chocolate night" during the Week 7 challenge, we went back to the Superfoods for Life: Cacao cookbook and made some rich chocolaty vegetable tarts. This was another one of those recipes that jumped out at me the first time I read through the book because it was such an interesting idea. You make the dough using cocoa powder and have bits of chocolate sprinkled inside the tart. I was so curious to see how well all that chocolate would match up with the savory ingredients.

First up, the ingredients for the dough:

- 1 tbsp sugar ($0.05)
- 1/4 cup cocoa powder ($0.60)
- 1-1/4 cups flour ($0.70)
- 1/4 tsp salt ($0.05)
- 1/2 cup melted coconut oil ($0.80)
- 4 tbsp cold water ($0)
- 2 tsp garlic powder ($0.05)

I added a little more garlic powder than the original recipe suggested, and used melted coconut oil instead of vegan margarine (one of the alternatives they offered). All together, the dough cost somewhere around $2.25.

Besides the dough, we also needed:

- 1 box of white mushrooms, chopped ($1.79)
- 1 yellow onion, thinly sliced ($0.60)
- 4 garlic cloves, minced ($0.08)
- 1/2 batch of chives, minced ($0.85)
- 1 tsp low sodium soy sauce ($0.05)
- 1-2 cups of artichoke hearts, chopped ($2)
- lemon juice ($0.10)
- salt ($0.05)
- 3 cubes of basil ($0.30)
- 2 tomatoes ($1.15)
- 2 oz of dark chocolate ($0.60)
- olive oil ($0.20)

The total for the tart contents was about $7.77 (the artichoke amount is more of a guess than anything else since we've had that jar for a while), making the grand total for our tart experiment approximately $10.02. Part of me wants to raise that total another $2 for the fresh basil we bought at the store that completely went bad before we could use it (and it wasn't even that long after buying it). It wasn't from Trader Joe's (with their awesome return policy), so we were just out the $2 and it really was just for this dish. If we just say it was about $12 then, it would be about $1 a tart (a little less, since not all of the vegetables made it into the tarts (more on that later)). Not exceptionally cheap, but fine.

There were a lot of steps involved in making the tarts, none of them exceptionally hard unless you're not used to working with the dough (like me) but together pretty time-consuming. They were:

1. Prep - chop mushrooms and onions, and mince garlic and chives. Mix them all together in a bowl with the soy sauce.

2. Make the dough - combine all of the dough ingredients together in a bowl and mix together well. [The consistency of the dough wasn't what I expected at all, but this was my first time making vegan dough. It was a little bit drier and less sticky to the touch, but I don't know if it was supposed to be like that or not.]

3. Separate dough into 12 portions. Take each portion of dough and roll it out flat.

4. Place each rolled out piece of dough into a greased muffin tin. [I did a really poor job of splitting the dough into equal portions... obviously. So I ended up moving some of the dough from piece to piece while in the tin. Oops.]

5. Slice up the artichoke hearts and add those as the bottom layer to each muffin cup.

6. Add the mushroom mixture. [NB: The mixture isn't cooked first according to the recipe. I was concerned about how much water this would release and considered a light saute first, but ended up just following the instructions. It turned out fine.]

7. Add a spritz of lemon juice and some salt to each muffin cup.

8. Add a little basil to each muffin cup. [Normally this would be where you place one basil leaf in each cup, but yeah... rotten basil leaves. So we microwaved the basil cubes for a little bit and then spread a little in each cup, kind of like pesto, which probably would have been a better idea.]

9. Slice the tomatoes and add one slice to each muffin cup.

10. Chop up the chocolate and add to the top of each cup.

11. Drizzle olive oil on top of each cup.

12. Bake at 425 degrees for 12 minutes and then lower the heat to 375 degrees and bake for 15 minutes.

Similar to the green beans, the tarts didn't quite look like the cookbook photo, but in this case, it didn't matter. The tarts were so interesting and really tasty. I wasn't sure how a cocoa-heavy dough would go with the vegetables but they were a great match. We actually had some mushroom mixture and some tomato ends left after putting together the muffin cups, so I lightly sauteed that with whatever chocolate bits were left, and it tasted really great. In my opinion, that actually tasted better than the tarts, probably because it was a little lighter. Chocolate just seems to match up well with tomatoes, mushrooms, and onions. Who knew? Not me.

Although they were tarts, they were a little too heavy at first to actually pick up and eat like a tart. Maybe I put too much of the mushroom mixture and other vegetables inside, but we ended up eating them with a fork which was fine. A was eventually able to lift and eat them by hand, but that was after they cooled a bit more. I was actually impressed that they came out intact, since it was my first try making tarts and I thought they would be a huge broken mess. We ended up eating all 12 that night. Probably not a great idea, but we were hungry and they were so good! Not a short process to make them, mostly because of the rolling out of the dough and all the vegetable prep, but it was definitely worth the effort to test this out. More of a weekend cooking project than a weeknight meal, in my opinion, but we would consider making these again.

Our favorite recipe from the cacao cookbook was the cocoa jerk tofu, but these tarts were quite good. Can't wait to experiment more with cocoa powder and adding chocolate to savory dishes, because this experiment was great. I've learned through this challenge that chocolate isn't just limited to mole and chili in the savory context. It's so great in so many other things! Very happy with these experiments.

Chocolate Green Beans

The other recipe I chose from the Superfoods for Life: Cacao cookbook for our first chocolate night was green beans amandine with dark chocolate. I wanted to have a vegetable dish alongside the cocoa jerk tofu for some balance. This one looked pretty good in the photo (I love cookbook photos) so we thought we'd give it a try.

For the recipe, we used:

- green beans, trimmed and cut ($2.69)
- salt to taste ($0.05)
- 1/2 cup of sliced almonds ($0.83)
- 2 tbsp of olive oil ($0.40)
- 1 tbsp balsamic vinegar ($0.35)
- 1/4 tsp vanilla extract ($0.05)
- half a bunch of tarragon leaves, chopped ($0.60)
- 2 oz of dark chocolate, chopped ($0.60)

This was a little over $5.50 for our second dish. It was a little less expensive than the cocoa jerk tofu, but that one went a lot further for the money (and we liked it more).

The green beans were pretty easy to make and we stuck close to the book for this one. Basically you saute the green beans, salt, and almonds in olive oil in a large skillet on medium high for a few minutes. Then add the balsamic vinegar and cook for another 5 minutes or so. By that point, the green beans should be more tender and the almonds browned.

A helped cook the green beans, which was a huge help because it allowed me to prep the tarragon and chocolate without worrying about the green beans. Once the green beans are cooked, remove them from the heat and add the chocolate, tarragon, and vanilla.

When I added the chocolate, it melted into a thick chocolaty sauce. It didn't look like that in the cookbook photos at all, but here it turned into a sauce. The book says the dish is supposed to be served warm so it wasn't a surprise that the chocolate melted, but I expected it to be more like a light coating than a sauce.

This dish was not at all what we were expecting. It tasted like dessert with the chocolate and the almonds, but it was part of our (savory) dinner. The green beans provided some crunch and texture, but didn't have a ton of flavor on their own. A thought that the balsamic added a bit of a sour flavor that seemed out of place. You couldn't taste the tarragon at all and it was completely overpowered by the chocolate. It was really like eating dessert and so incredibly rich from the chocolate and almonds that I found it hard to eat that much of it in one sitting. A ended up eating whatever was left after our initial servings as his dessert.

We didn't really like this at all and would not make it again. But because of the awesomeness of the cocoa jerk tofu, we knew this cookbook did have good recipes. This one just didn't work for us. We hoped our next chocolate experiment would be more like the tofu and better for us than this one!

Cocoa Jerk Tofu

Have you ever found one of those recipes that just grabs your attention from the moment you read it and then as soon as you taste it, you're just instantly in love with it? That was the case for me with the cocoa jerk tofu from the Superfoods for Life: Cacao cookbook. Even though I had a long list of possible recipes from the cookbook for the Week 7 challenge (since everything sounded so good), I kept coming back to the cocoa jerk tofu. I'm so glad I did, as it was a truly wonderful dish.

I often make adaptations to recipes for things that we have at home or things that we like, but when I saw the list of ingredients for the sauce here, I tried to stick to it as closely as possible. (If you want to see the original, it came up in Google Books when I searched the recipe name ... or just get the book.) One of the hardest things to get right in a dish is the seasoning, especially the balance of the seasoning, so I figured I would try the recipe as-written to give it its best chance. Amazingly, we had all the sauce ingredients at home already, which is awesome, because now it means I can make it whenever I want as long as I pick up tofu (or some other protein) and some peppers and onions!

For the sauce, I used (and I actually measured for once since I wanted to get the balance exactly as intended):

- 2 tsp Madras curry powder
- 1 tsp chili powder
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 tsp cinnamon
- 1/2 tsp allspice
- 2 tbsp sriracha
- 1/3 cup cocoa powder
- 1/4 cup low sodium soy sauce
- 1/3 cup vegetable broth (for me, really 1/3 cup water + small spoonful of Better than Bouillon)
- 3 minced garlic cloves
- 1 tbsp agave nectar
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp lemon juice
- 2 tbsp hoisin sauce
- 1/2 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp ground oregano

The list looks long, but there wasn't anything to actually "prep" other than the garlic. Everything else came straight from the jar, bottle, or container, so it was much easier than it looks.

The non-sauce ingredient list was really short: 1 container of firm tofu, 1 yellow onion, 1 red bell pepper, and 1 green bell pepper. Very easy. Adding this to the sauce, the approximate cost of the recipe was $7.92. It made a good amount of food, so that was a pretty fair price. (It does need a grain or something else on the side, so tack on another $1 or $2 to the total.)

Making the cocoa jerk tofu was really easy. The process reminded me of another baked tofu recipe (here) that I really liked that I also did for one of the cooking challenges. Make the sauce, add the tofu and vegetables, bake, done. It really was that simple. Perfect for a weeknight meal because there is so little work involved! To make the recipe:

1. Mince the garlic and add to a small bowl with all the other sauce ingredients. Mix well.

The original recipe said to blend all of this in a blender, but I just used a spoon and a small bowl and it was completely fine. The only thing that would even really be broken up in the blender is the garlic and we didn't care if there were garlic pieces in the sauce. I mince garlic fairly small as it is, so why waste the blender?

2. Slice the onion and peppers into thin slices. Cut the tofu into blocks (or squares, whatever you want). I tried to make sure the pieces were thin enough to soak up as much sauce as possible.

3. Mix the tofu and vegetables into the sauce so that everything is well-coated. Let it sit for a little bit.

And here's where reading comprehension comes in again (just like here and here). I was reading the recipe right before I was going to start prepping and I saw that I was supposed to let the tofu and vegetables sit in the sauce for an hour. Oops. I didn't notice that the first time around when I read it. I ended up letting it sit for about 15-20 minutes as I let the oven preheat and I did some work. Maybe it would have been even better if I let it sit for an hour, but 20 minutes seemed fine if you're in a rush (or didn't notice the marinating instruction).

4. Bake at 400 degrees for about 40 minutes, stirring everything halfway through. The original recipe called for 30 minutes of baking and then some broiling, but skipping the broiling and just baking a little longer seemed fine to us. It really wasn't the most attractive dish coming out of the oven, but who cared what it looked like when it tasted so good?

Wow. That was basically our reaction once we tried this dish. It was fantastic! We had both tried a little bit of it before it went into the oven and the sauce was incredible. There were so many nuances to it because of all the different ingredients and you could definitely taste the chocolate, but the flavors were also so balanced. It was even better when it came out of the oven because the heat came through much more than it did when the vegetables were raw (not sure why). We absolutely loved this. I started thinking that maybe I should start adding cocoa powder to everything if it was going to come out this well. So much flavor and completely vegan as well, so we were good to both our taste buds and the environment.

This dish is definitely going on our "make again" list and it's the type of dish that would go into a rotation if we had one, because it's quick and simple to prep, we usually have all the ingredients other than the fresh stuff that we can easily get, and it was so delicious. We loved this so much that it was hard to believe that the other dish we made that night from the same book, which we'll talk about in the next Week 7 challenge post, totally missed the mark for us. We were as unenthused about that one as we were thrilled with this one. But overall, we are just so happy with this challenge because of this awesome tofu dish!