This is an annual event held at the Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City. It costs $25 for each person for the class and $11 each for the museum admission. The museum is well worth the admission fee and many people spend all day searching through the five floors.
We can't spend all day since the power chairs get uncomfortable after awhile and we need to get out of them. We limit ourselves to two hours in the chairs.
Someone offered to take a photo of us together. You can see the woman behind us was dressed in a skirt with a petticoat. That style went out in the 50's. I remember wearing petticoats. I had one like this. My waist was exactly like that, too.
There were three women dressed this way. I asked them if they belonged to a group. They said no, they just liked to wear skirts with petticoats.
We got there when the doors opened which was a good thing because it got pretty crowded. I sampled some of the bread, cheese, chocolate, cupcakes, sauerkraut and other offerings.
I stopped at the Beehive Cheese booth. They had cheeses flavored with whisky and jalapeno, among other things. I have the palette of a two year old so I only sampled the milder flavors.
I sampled some chocolates here.
I wanted to be sure that we saw the Mayan exhibit. It was phenomenal. But, again, we had to rush through it.
We had only a short time left before the class started so we went to visit the dinosaur section.
The class was held in a room off the side on the second floor. The presenter was a woman from Caputo's Market and Deli.
First, she passed around a small cup with cacao juice in it. It didn't taste like chocolate. It tasted like a fruit juice. She took apart a cacao pod. Some pods are brown but others come in various colors like these.
Inside the pod, there are seeds and cacao butter. Some craft chocolate makers use the cacao butter and others don't.
Next she gave us a piece of Dove's dark chocolate. That's one of my favorites. We talked about the waxiness and sweetness of the Dove chocolate.
She sent around a piece of Amano Dos Rios 70% chocolate. It's made in Orem, Utah, and has won international awards. Utah is hot bed of craft chocolate makers. The ad for this bar says, "This single note dark chocolate made with cacao beans from the Dominican Republic is known for its floral and citrus notes." This bar costs $7.99 at Caputo's Market and Deli.
The next bar was Solstice Madagascar. It's made from cacao beans from the Sambarino valley which is sometimes called the "green gold" of Madagascar. It costs $8.99.
Moving right along, we tried a bar from Papua New Guinea. It's described as having an earthy aroma along with the scent of the allspice that grows near it. The price is $9.99.
We had another piece of Dove chocolate for contrast. There were small cups of water on the table and saltine crackers to clear our palettes but I never cleared mine.
The next bar was the most expensive at $17.99. It's grown in Venezuela in the Chuao valley. It costs so much because the only way to get to these beans is to haul them out of the secluded valley where they grow. A group of women control access to the beans in this area. I wonder if the collapse of the economy of Venezuela is a factor in the price.
The next bar was the most expensive at $17.99. It's grown in Venezuela in the Chuao valley. It costs so much because the only way to get to these beans is to haul them out of the secluded valley where they grow. A group of women control access to the beans in this area. I wonder if the collapse of the economy of Venezuela is a factor in the price.
Our last chocolate bar was made from beans grown in Ecuador. It won four awards in 2018. It is priced at $9.99.
I like chocolate and I thought it all tasted great. I still like Dove chocolate the best.
