chocolate rant, volume: late summer

Howdy chocophiles!
It’s been an incredibly busy few months, and we’re sitting here wondering what happened to summer. Sam, the elder spawn, started kindergarten last week! And not just any kindergarten; it’s the one whose Peace Garden has been selling us fresh mint all summer, as it was harvested by kids in summer school programs. We’re excited to become part of the Vance Elementary community. There may be opportunity to teach kids about good chocolate; but more broadly, we look forward to help spread the food philosophy that informs all of our consumption habits.

Chefs Move to Schools

In this foodtopian society, as our mountain foodshed has been coined by the Asheville-Buncombe Convention & Visitors Bureau (read more here, exciting things are afoot in the schools. With the inspiration and guidance of Laurey Mastersen of Laurey’s Catering, a culinary matriarch recently-returned from a White House school food forum, we are locally implementing a national program called Chefs Move to Schools. Chefs Move to Schools is part of First Lady Michelle Obama’s Let’s Move initiative, which seeks to end childhood obesity. Under the watchful eye of the USDA, the Chefs Move program can bring legitimacy and collusion to the various efforts of people everywhere who want to take back child health from the grips of obesity and disease.

I’m courting Vance Elementary to be their partner Chef under the program. As an example of what I might do in an official capacity, tomorrow I will be bringing a snack of locally-grown plums, purchased at Asheville City Market direct from farmer Danny McConnell, for Sam’s kindergarten class. And so begins our guerilla infiltration of what has long been a bastion of unhealthy, government-subsidized commodity food-in-a-box. We’re going to help get kids thinking about food, and how important it is to the health of their bodies, and their community.

To that end, if any of you have helpful anecdotes from your own experience, please share. It’s important that we build on previous successes and learn from others’ pitfalls, for there is no time to waste. I want my kids, and their peers, to live longer and healthier lives!

Mountain Xpress Best of WNC 2010

I have a deep philosophical question for you. Let’s say you are the planning commissioner for a new Platonic republic. One in which most of your needs are met by a diverse collection of specialists. Who would be your hair dresser? More importantly, who would be your barista? Who would make your chocolate?! Who would make your ice cream (Ultimate, of course)? Which beer brewer would you not want to live without? You need not reply to me with your answers. Better, go here and funnel that hypothetical republic planning into our annual WNC popularity contest. And do it by 11 pm today, Monday, August 23!

Thanks for voting us #1 chocolate shop last year. We got a hideous purple poster from Mountain Xpress commemorating our victory. Boy, do we want another one of those hideous purple posters!

Artisan Chocolate Bar Collection now online!

We have introduced a new section to our website, devoted to our favorite craft chocolatiers. We are focusing our portfolio on the great American chocolatiers, of which there are now quite a few. First to go live are Askinosie, Taza, and Rogue.
Shawn Askinosie has coupled sound business ethics with excellent chocolate-making. His Missouri-based business sources directly from farms and co-ops in: Davao, Philippines; San Jose del Tambo, Ecuador; Soconusco, Mexico. His packaging is fully compostable and provides transparent tracking of batches from bean to bar. Look for new origins soon, or buy online now
Taza Chocolate resides in Somerville, Massachussets, where they stone-grind lightly roasted cacao mostly from the La Red Cooperative in the Dominican Republic. They use classic Mexican granite mills to craft dark chocolate (now all kosher certified, as well as organic certified) that is likely different from any you’ve ever tasted. Minimal processing and a particularly fruity cocoa bean, yields a fruit-forward chocolate that is intentionally not smooth on the palate, and tastes amazing. buy online here.

Rogue Chocolatier is Colin Gasko, a one-man show from Minneapolis. He’s a perfect example of the fanatical chocolatier. I got to visit his factory and witness a batch of Hispaniola in the works, and his technical mastery of the materials and the equipment made readily apparent why his chocolate is so. damn. good. He sources from the Dominican Republic, Madagascar, and Venezuela for his regular selections, and just introduced a new micro-lot from a single farm in Peru that is mind-blowing. buy online here.
Soon, we’ll be adding the work of Nashville, Tennesee-based chocolatier Olive & Sinclair, as well as Utah chocolate geek Art Pollard’s award-winning Amano Chocolate, and wildly-popular Brooklyn-based Mast Brothers. Of course, all that and much more is already available at the Chocolate Lounge.

Upcoming Events, in which we’ll be participating

LAFF
Lexington Avenue Arts & Fun Festival, Sunday, September 5. Quite possibly the best free street festival ever (sorry, Bele Chere). It’s all day, all-local, all-original. We might be vending on the street, but if not, we’ll be right down the street at the usual location! Details here.

True Nature Country Fair
For the fourth year, Organic Growers School is putting on the True Nature Country Fair. The festival is billed as “a celebration of life lived in connection with the Earth,” featuring sustainability-minded businesses and artisans gathering to share their crafts. It will be held at the Big Ivy Community Center in Barnardsville on September 25 and 26. If you need help remembering the dates, it is between September 24 (Dan & Jael’s anniversary), and September 27 (Jon Bon Jovi’s birthday). (It’s also Logan’s birthday, but isn’t it cool that I remember Jon’s birthday from the bygone era when I was a member of the Bon Jovi fan club?) Event details are available here. It’s a bunch of earth-loving crunchy granola types frolicking in the early autumn, taking nature walks and talking about compost! And it’s $5 admission! And we’ll be there. You’d be a fool to miss it.

March of Dimes Signature Chefs Gala & Auction
On October 8, the local chapter of March of Dimes will put on their much anticipated Signature Chefs Gala & Auction, a black-tie event at the Grove Park Inn to raise money for, of course, March of Dimes. This year, Jael & I were invited to participate as chefs, and we’ll be sampling our chocolates, or some other manner of delicacy, to the attendees. Tickets are $100 per person, and this proves to be a really amazing culinary experience. We’re honored to join Asheville’s best for this special evening. Check out details about the event and register here.

empty bowls luncheon
Manna Food Bank’s annual fundraiser brings together our thriving potters community with hungry people, to benefit truly hungry people. For a $20 donation, you get to pick a handmade clay bowl, and eat soup, bread and desserts (enter: French Broad Chocolates) from some of the coolest local establishments. Thursday, October 14, 11:30-1:30 at the Doubletree Hotel in Biltmore Village. Read more about the amazing grassroots event to end hunger, celebrating 20 years, at www.emptybowls.net.

TerraVITA
“TerraVITA Food & Wine Event will bring together some of the finest biodynamic and organically-grown wines and microbrews in the world with the very best sustainable foods in the Southeast! TerraVITA’s Grand Tasting on the Green will take place on the Green at Southern Village in Chapel Hill, NC, from 1 – 5 p.m. on October 16, 2010. Alongside international fine wine producers and microbrewers, more than two dozen chefs from North Carolina’s top restaurants, confectioners and food artisans will prepare sample tastings for all attending this sustainable celebration! There will be more than 100 wines, a half-dozen microbrews and select coffee and tea producers offering samples of their very best organic beverages.
“Also plan to experience the sights and sounds of live bluegrass music while soaking in an autumn afternoon with a silent auction offering dining and travel, food and wine merchandise and original art. All the proceeds from the auction will go to the Carolina Farm Stewardship Association and TABLE, a non-profit dedicated to providing nutritious food for children at risk for hunger, especially during weekends and when free public school meals are unavailable. Tickets are all-inclusive, food and beverage, for $65. For more information, go to www.terravitaevent.com.”

As went the summer, faster than we could have imagined, so will go this autumn. Enjoy the crisp air, the fall harvest, and whatever else the season brings.

Many thanks for your continued support. Eat well!

Love and respect,

Dan & Jael, your chocolatiers

10 south lexington avenue, asheville, nc 28801
828.252.4181

www.frenchbroadchocolates.com

Justin Allen’s 2006 record Dive in Deep is playing on my home stereo, and I can’t help but tap my toes and nod my head. In my mind, I envision John Mayer as a young man. Instead of the blues singers of the Delta hooking him into melody, I imagine the rhythmic changes of Thelonius Monk and the instrumentations of Chick Corea wriggling their way into his musical brain. I imagine what that might sound like, and Justin Allen’s record makes sense and makes me smile.

He has a voice that is both soft and accessible enough to just be plain nice to listen to, and forceful enough to make you pay attention to what he’s saying. I recently sat down with Justin to learn more.

L: How long have you been a musician?

J: Forever, but I’ve been playing the music that I am playing now for the past 6 years.

L: How did you get started?

J: In high school, just writing songs in class and then going home and working them out, and then starting a band because….I didn’t want to play by myself. And then to avoid college, I started playing out to make money.

L: You recently moved to Asheville, right?

J: That’s true

L: Leaving your band behind, I think?

J: That’s right, but I don’t know how long I’m going to stay in Asheville. I’m thinking I’m going to travel around. I’m getting into a routine here and I don’t want to do that. I want to learn about somewhere and then go somewhere else and learn about that place. I never went on tour with my band, so this is my way of doing that by myself.

L: Do you like the solo aspect better than playing with a group?

J: Yes and no. I love playing with a band but….I like the solo thing because I can practice by myself and not have to worry about someone else’s schedule, or teaching them songs, especially the new ones, so…I mean I love the community aspect of being in a band, but I love the get up and go aspect of being alone.

L: What’s the next step for you?

J: Moving up to Plattsburg, New York, about an hour from Canada, and volunteering for a Kripalu program.

Justin Allen is performing at the Chocolate Lounge on Saturday July 17th and Wednesday July 28th.

Hello! I am so very excited to introduce the French Broad Chocolate Lounge Blog! This has been a project a long time in the works and I can’t wait to get started.

First things first, I should probably introduce myself. My name is Logan Ayliffe, and I’m a new addition to the Chocolate Lounge back-of-house team. If you have been to the Chocolate Lounge before, you have probably seen me bustling about preparing delicious confections for you and your loved ones. I’ve loved being a part of such a happenin’ spot and friendly family, and I’ll use my extremely nerdy skills to spread our love of chocolate throughout the internets.

So. Why are we here? Why a blog for the Chocolate Lounge? Well, rest assured this won’t be a repository for aggressive marketing materials or anything like that. In fact, a surprisingly small amount of words will be dedicated to talking about ourselves in this forum. You already receive our newsletters, get our Facebook updates and tweets, and see our ads in local Asheville publications. The real purpose of this blog will be to engage with people that share our passions on various subjects, hopefully with the verbose rhetoric that folks are so fond of hearing from Dan and Jael already.

With so much variety and depth to those passions in Asheville, it behooves me to start broadly in order to give you a sense of the direction we hope to pursue. Let’s start with the three main things folks all over the country think of when contemplating Asheville: Community, Food, and Music & Arts.

At the Lounge, we are blessed to have a Community of talented individuals that share their gifts with us, each other, and you. Whether its our General Manager Jakub’s yoga classes, front-of -house superstar Eliza Rosbach’s penchant for photography, or owners Dan and Jael Rattigan’s passion for building relationships with local businesses, suppliers, and individuals, we are intimately connected with the vibrant community of artisans, crafters, and just plain wonderful people that call Asheville home. The Lounge is truly a public space, and we are so grateful that many of you have chosen it as a gathering place for you and your loved ones, a celebratory space for special events, or a quiet spot to read a book or work on your laptop.

With regards to Food, there is so much to be said! Asheville is so lucky to have fabulous food and fantastic farmers, with so many exciting flavors out there just waiting to dance upon your palate. I’m sure we could talk about not just local food but the details of farm to plate processes all day long and never get bored! We are incredibly blessed to have so many dedicated individuals that spend their days pouring their hearts into the foods that we enjoy in local restaurants and co-ops. At the French Broad Chocolate Lounge, we make a concerted effort to source local ingredients whenever possible. Not just because they are local, but because they are superior in quality as well. Of course, this doesn’t just include food but also coffee, wine, beer, and every other variable in that most delicious equation.

On the Music & Arts front, many of you will have already noticed that we host talented local and touring artists playing in the Lounge every week. I’m sure you will have also perused the works on display and for sale on our walls in the Lounge from local artists like Andy Farkas. We love participating in Arts events, like the ArtMOB gathering in which Andy led us through screen-printing art onto a giant chocolate shortbread cookie. If there is one thing better than the visual appreciation of fine artwork, it must be consuming it with gusto afterward! Expect to see in depth interviews and profiles of Asheville artists and musicians, with lots of photos and videos to boot!

There are a lot more things we expect to talk about in these entries, but I want to save some surprises for later. For now, I hope you will read and comment as your heart desires. You can also follow us on Facebook and Twitter, which will keep you abreast of updates over here as well. Dan and Jael are particularly fond of snapping candid photos in our third floor kitchen, or out at the tailgate market, and posting them up there, so if you want to see the smiling faces and skilled hands that prepare the small luxuries you have come to enjoy at the Lounge, head over there too.

Thanks for reading, and talk to you soon!

Logan

Flood: an unexpected time for renovation

So we have a story to share with you.

One particularly beautiful Saturday evening last month (less than a week after Mothers’ Day), Dan got a phone call while getting Sam and Max ready for bed. Logan called to tell us: the floor drains are backing up! All of them! I skedaddled down to the Chocolate Lounge, finding Geoff Weeks playing keyboard to a long line of guests, while in the back, the flood waters were rising…steadily…

We painfully asked our guests to leave, closed up shop, and waited for the plumber. Little did we know at the time, but that would set the clock running on the longest downtime we’ve seen at our business since we opened nearly 2 1/2 years ago. Sunday we moved all furniture upstairs and called in our flooring contractor for an estimate, and Monday the carpets and the water-damaged walls were removed. Tuesday, the flooring contractor began the three day chore of grinding carpet glue off the concrete floors, and sanding them down to a smooth finish. Meanwhile, drywall and kitchen wall work was commenced, while we attempted to take advantage of the downtime to add and update our chalkboard menus and informational materials and deep clean everything upstairs that wasn’t a construction zone. By Friday, the concrete had been stained and sealed, and we were cleaning, touching up paint, and replacing fixtures, while the pastry team was back in action getting the place restocked with yumminess. By nothing short of a miracle, by Saturday at 5pm, we reopened the Chocolate Lounge to an amazingly big crowd.

What a blessing this forced rehabilitation was, now that we have retrospection! We wanted to redo the floors this summer anyway, so though not on our preferred schedule, it’s been done. And the place looks fantastic.

All week long, we watched with anguish from within the lounge as disappointed faces peered in the windows at a construction site, rather than the inviting, delicious sanctuary they had come to enjoy. On the bright side, it was truly remarkable how many volunteer offers we received from patrons, friends, and business partners alike (including our bank manager!). Were it not for the army of chocolate lounge staff that was eager to work, to whom we had primary obligation for work as it became available, we certainly would have taken our supporters up on their pledges of furniture-moving, construction clean-up, etcetera. Thanks so much for your sympathy and encouragement!

On the ingredient acquisition front: one victory, one ongoing battle

Sam, now five years old, will begin Kindergarten this fall, at Vance Elementary. We are quite excited about the opportunities that await him there. When we went to registration, Vance Elementary Peace Garden, about which we were already aware, caught our eye in a fresh light. There, amid the budding broccoli and peas, was a huge patch of garden mint. We introduced ourselves to Nicole Acordino, the garden coordinator (a post made possible with her appointment as an Americorps volunteer), and will now be purchasing weekly harvests from the hands of the kindergarten classes! We are so proud to be supporting our school’s garden. What is basically a weed, we are able to utilize in our cold-infused mint cream for the Garden Mint chocolate truffle. (Note: this truffle isn’t available on the website, but if you ask, we can include it in a web order.) What a sweet, aromatic victory!

The ongoing battle, if you will, is in our quest for the best dairy possible. While we usually prefer to hold off on such commentary until success is won, this is highly illustrative of our fervor for the best ingredients. For our chocolate confections, we use a whole lot of heavy cream, and for Chocolate Lounge drinks, a good amount of milk and 1/2 & 1/2. We only buy organic cream, half and half, and milk. We currently buy Organic Valley cream and half & half, most of which comes from Wisconsin, while our milk is bottled in West Asheville (where does the milk come from? Good question. Mostly from large organic dairies in Texas, we suspect, but we cannot know completely.) While the cream and half & half are of very high quality, and we really jive with Organic Valley’s cooperative business structure, we think we may have found something better. Farmer’s All-Natural Creamery, an Iowa organic dairy processor owned by Amish and Mennonites, bottles (in all recyclable bottles) non-homogenized, low-temperature VAT pasteurized milk from small family farms within a day’s drive from the plant. Learn more about them at www.farmerscreamery.com. For benefits of low-temp pasteurization and the perils of homogenization, read a few enlightening blog entries on their website: http://www.farmerscreamery.com.

Now, the trick is getting it. The most proximate distribution point is Atlanta, at the Dekalb Farmers Market. Dekalb has had trouble getting their act together to keep the supply available for our produce/milk man, so our initial attempts to purchase were met with failure. So close, yet still so far away! Wish us and Paramount Produce (our milk man) luck, and soon we’ll be scoring the good stuff.

(Note: we feel really good about our butter. Homestead Creamery, of Burnt Chimney, Virginia, churns our unsalted butter in small batches, to order, from cream from their two adjacent family farms’ herds. Mostly grassfed, with farm-raised feed supplemented in the colder months, it’s pretty cool to say our butter comes from 225 healthy cows in a two family operation. If only we could achieve this level of knowledge with the rest of our milk! With their example of a successful small Applachian dairy, we hope to see more sustainable dairy operations return to our mountains, so that one day buying milk from big Texas farms, however “organic”, would be unneccessary and absurd!)

New offerings

Avant garde hot chocolates
We’re taking baby steps toward making our own chocolate, from the bean. As you may recall from previous correspondence, we have aspirations to eventually import our own cacao, including beans from our own organic farm in Costa Rica. To get some experience under our belts, we’re starting to learn about chocolate grinding using our favorite lightly roasted nibs from Guittard Chocolate Company. We stock these nibs for bulk sale at the Chocolate Lounge, and use them in our Cacao Nib Brownies and Strawberry Balsamic Truffle.

The result of this effort is two new hot chocolate drinks.
1. Xocolatl (pronounced ‘SHO ko LA tul’, a Nahuatl word for “bitter water”), an homage to the original chocolate drink of the Mayans. Cacao, toasted corn, cinnamon, anise, clove & chile, blended frothy with fresh-pressed steamed almond milk. It shares the constituents with the original, but we’re going on a limb to assert that ours is superior! The original would also have been prepared without sweetener. We add a small amount of organic sugar to order, and can substitute agave or omit the sweet altogether if that’s your preference.
2. If you were to walk the present-day streets of Oaxaca, the culinary capital of Mexico, you would be greeted with aromas of chocolate from various Chocolaterias across the city. Our Oaxaca hot chocolate bears close resemblance to the beverage you’d receive from these shops. Fresh-ground cacao, toasted almonds and cinnamon, served sweet with steamed milk.

Please enjoy our new offerings, and let us know what you think!

Mast Brothers Chocolate, Brooklyn, NY
Rick and Michael Mast handcraft chocolate bean-to-bar with cacao from small family farms and coops in Madagascar, Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Ecuador. Your first impression is of the gorgeous wallpaper-like packaging, and the bars within are equally as impressive. Dan’s favorite is with cacao nibs and Madagascar chocolate, while Jael particularly loves the Patanemo, an exclusive Venezuelan origin formulated at 81% cacao mass. While not cheap, these bars are well worth the investment, and if eaten with the contemplation and pace their quality invites, should last you longer than a bottle of wine…

By summers’ end, we will begin offering some of our favorite chocolate bars, Mast Brothers included, on our website. But not quite yet. How’s that for a tease?!

Local fruit time!

It’s that time of year when Jael and I dutifully start building up our local fruit supply. We make fresh fruit pastries when the fruit becomes available. In the last month, we’ve been showcasing strawberries, cherries, and now blueberries and raspberries, in gallettes and tarts. This is a painfully limited offering, because of our insistence on utilizing the fruit only when it’s available locally. Anxiously awaiting peaches…

We puree and freeze fruit as well, and this comprises the bulk of our business’ fruit use. Year-round, you will find chester blackberry sauce on our flourless chocolate torte, and strawberry puree on our Theros Olive Oil Cake. The following chocolates make use of local fruits, put up this time of year: Fresh Raspberry (raspberries from McConnell Farm and Zimmerman Berry Farm), Strawberry Balsamic (McConnell), and Port & Fig (figs come in later this summer, and are currently sourced from a backyard in Hickory). Dan has attempted, with limited success, to use Wild Black Cherries from our backyard in a white chocolate butter ganache. The trees are chock full this season, so we’ll see what might appear–for a limited time–in the truffle case. And perhaps a traditional Black Forest gateau in our cake arsenal? Stay tuned.

fathers’ day

This Sunday, June 20 marks the first Fathers’ Day since Dan’s dad passed away last fall. (As a matter of fact, today, June 13, would have been Bob Rattigan’s 65th birthday.) …Pause… Not quite the chocolate holiday that is Mamas’ Day, but an important time to celebrate dads in whatever capacity they would prefer. If I could celebrate with my dad, I’d probably go camping and boating on the Chesapeake.

If our chocolates or brownies fit the bill, you can order online by Tuesday evening, June 15, for delivery by the weekend.

If you’re nearby, come see us this week, bring your dad, and we’ll chip in a free scoop of Ultimate ice cream on your Pisgah a la Mode, in honor of thy father.
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For your continued support, we are very grateful.

Love and respect,

Dan & Jael

Mama’s Day order deadline (May 1 – 2010)

In order to get your mama’s chocolate love delivered by Saturday, May 8, we’ll need to receive your order for shipping by USPS Priority Mail by the end of the day, Tuesday, May 5.

For procrastinators, we have an additional option. We’re happy to send out FedEx Overnight shipments on Wednesday and Thursday, but we must receive orders by Noon on Thursday! To take advantage of the Overnight shipping option, please call the Chocolate Lounge during our business hours (open 11am) at 828.252.4181, to place your order over the phone.

Beautification & Customization
If you haven’t recently checked out our website, I encourage you to take a fresh look. Redesigned late last year, we finally populated the site with new photographs, taken by our very own Eliza Rosbach. When Eliza’s not making a pretty latte, or serenading us with her guitar (she’s been known to play her own music at the Chocolate Lounge on occasion; refer to our events calendar for details), she’s treating our chocolates to a glamour shoot. How lucky we are to have such a talented woman in our midst! And Eliza has offered her services for anyone who might want a photo-documented party in our private party room! (Call or email Ashley @ frenchbroadchocolates . com for details, if that rocks your boat.)

The other great thing about our much-prettier website is the new Custom Collection. For those who don’t have the fortune of standing in front of our truffle case, we give you a virtual alternative. Pick your truffles to fit a 6, 12, or 24 piece box, and if arithmetic isn’t your strong suit, a helpful widget will assist you in arriving at the right number to fill the box. It’s fun; go try it for mom’s sake!

Macaron-ization

We’ve teased you with at least two previous mentions in newsletters of yore, but now we can indubitably announce that French Almond Macaron are in our pastry case (sorry, not available online yet. Beg us, and we’ll ship you some!) Most recently, a pistachio macaron with a honey buttercream filling! We have also been doing a classic almond with strawberry buttercream. You’ll see more of that one, especially as strawberry season comes upon us.

What not to expect: bright, artificial colors and extract flavoring. Our take on the most awesome sandwich cookie in the history of the universe is flecked with skins of unblanched almonds, and derives its colors and flavors from the litany of natural, carefully sourced ingredients in our arsenal.

The pastry crew (Holly, Jessica & Lisa) has really nailed these babies. It’s one of those occasions when the Paris of the South has something to teach to the Paris of the…France!

Help us improve.

We are continually amazed at how much Asheville residents and visitors choose to come out and support us at the Chocolate Lounge. It tells us we must be doing something right!

We would love to hear feedback about the quality of our desserts and our service. The best way to offer your thoughts is to email us directly. This way, your message gets right where it needs to go. We’ll take it all, from the glowing compliments to the harsh reality checks that may lurk in your thoughts (e.g. “Dude, you need to dim the lights a little more at night,” or “Did you realize that musician was going to play an accordion?!”)

If you take it as your personal mission to see us succeed, you might submit your glowing review to our Google listing, or Yelp, or if you do Chowhound, that would be great too. It is a mixed blessing that anyone can be a food critic. If you search around the web (as we occasionally do), you will see that the vast majority of comments about us are great, but a few are less-than-great. When those negative reviews arise (it has happened a handful of times since we opened), our first reaction is always that we wish the customer had come to us first with an account of their experience, so we can use it constructively to improve.

Art Subscription + Chocolate = happy mama

Finally, a plug for Andy Farkas, the acclaimed wood engraver whose artwork decorates most of our second floor. We had a great time coupling with the Asheville Art Museum for an ARTmob event featuring an artist talk with Andy, on April 15. It was really well-attended, and concluded, after Andy read one of his fantastic stories, with a frantic attempt to silkscreen the final image from the book onto a giant shortbread cookie with chocolate “ink”! Watch a great video vignette of the event here (by Aaron Morell).

Andy has commenced a year-long series of bi-monthly wood engraving storyprints, packaged as a subscription. Read more about what is included, and a special deal through June 30, here. If your mama has been especially virtuous this year and would love to start a print collection as much as Jael would (I’m working on it…), take advantage of the special deal through June 30, and we’ll throw in a 12 piece box of chocolates to sweeten the deal. Contact Andy (fablewood @ earthlink .net) for details, if that tickles your fancy.

Pomegranate!

Ooh ooh! I almost forgot to mention Jael’s latest stroke of genius! The pomegranate truffle, as tart and lively as it was, didn’t quite blow our skirts up. Jael brought new sparks to the chocolate and pomegranate marriage with a little organic ginger! More tart and lively, we’ve fallen in love all over again, and hope you do too. You can find it in our vegan Buddha Collection, or you can drop it into a Custom Collection. Regardless, the important thing is that you try it.

Signing off. More to say, but I have to stop somewhere.

Don’t forget to honor thy mother, May 9! Order for delivery before Mama’s Day by Tuesday, May 4, end of day.
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For your continued support, we are very grateful.

Love and respect,

Dan & Jael

Salutations, chocolate enthusiasts and patrons of our Chocolate Lounge!

Itching for Spring

This, the first day of February, has us itching for spring. Bulbs are popping up in the yard, and soon the forsythia will send forth her brilliant yellow blooms. The fecundity of nature heavy on our minds, we turn for warmth to our lovers, and perform the myriad rituals that seem synonymous with the coming of spring. Oh Valentine! You know who you are. Te quiero…

Aphrodisiac Collection

Chocolate is legendary for stimulating feelings of love and well-being. Myriad foods are believed to be imbued with the powers of the mighty greek goddess of love, Aphrodite. In her honor, we have assembled an Aphrodisiac Collection, featuring a few of these love-inducing ingredients in six truffles.

Four of the six you may already have the pleasure of knowing. Fig & port is chock full of notorious love foods: figs, wine, chocolate and almonds. Cabernet anise is a new classic, unveiled in our Holiday collection, but too good to shelve for next Christmas! Indian kulfi, with cardamom, roses, and pistachios, was one of Jael’s early fits of genius; and how obvious what Indians like to do after dessert! Canela picante warms the body and stimulates the senses with cinnamon and chile pepper.

Cosmic Love Potion

Two new truffles perfectly round out our Aphrodisiac Collection. Introducing Cosmic Love Potion: a milk chocolate butter ganache with Christa Hebal’s namesake elixir, the recipe for which came to Christa in a dream. And what a dream it must have been! Last but not least, Theros, orange & fennel: featuring Dan’s most favorite olive oil in the whole wide world, harvested from ancient trees in Messinia, Greece by Asheville’s own Niko Theros. You can also find this truffle as a new fixture in our Buddha Collection of vegan truffles.

Valentines Gift Ideas

If you aren’t looking to awaken your Valentine’s swadhisthana chakra, we of course have a wide selection of other chocolate collections, from our chocolatier’s choice Melange Collection to our assortment of Salted Honey Caramels, or our beautiful chocolate Brownies.

If you really want a gift that will endure for months to come, our Chocolate Subscriptions will bring chocolates to your love’s door for the next six or twelve months.

Order for delivery before Valentines Day by Tuesday, February 9, end of day.
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BENEFIT: Help for Haiti

We’re throwing a benefit event at the Chocolate Lounge on Tuesday, February 16. Details, and an opportunity to donate now, can be found at http://www.mercycorps.org/fundraising/frenchbroadchocolatelounge. Please do what you can to support the victims of this disaster.

We are currently researching the viability of some longer-term initiatives to support the revival of Haitian agriculture; specifically, we hope to help develop a sustainable agroforestry program, including production of organic cacao. Haiti shares the island of Hispanola with Dominican Republic, but historically, “sharing” has not described their relationship. The recent catastrophe has prompted unprecedented support across their shared border, as Dominicans set up food drives and provide heavy equipment for the recovery effort. Dominican cacao production is now world-renowned, rivaling the “aromatic” cacao (that which ends up in good chocolate bars) produced in places like Venezuela. Our vision is an information and seed-sharing relationship with the Dominican Republic to establish Haiti with some long-term, high-value, erosion-preventive agriculture.

If you happen to have any knowledge or diplomatic leverage that could help in this effort, please share! As part of the Asheville business community, the primary focus of our charitable giving remains here in Western North Carolina. Insofar as we have a role to play in other communities we affect with our buying decisions, sustainable cacao production is high on our agenda.

To recap: need aphrodisiacs? We can help. Need a way to give to Haiti? We can help there too.

For your continued support, we are very grateful.

Love and respect,

Dan & Jael