A Birthday Chocolate Dream (European)

[damigella]

This post is dedicated to pgrabia for her birthday. Cento di questi giorni! (May this day return a hundred times, traditional Italian birthday wish).

I loved justjuly4's idea of "what ice cream would each character be?" (go read it if you haven't yet!) except I have very conservative taste in gelato and couldn't come up with anything - plus, many ice-cream tastes are really different in Italy and in the US even if they share a name.

So I decided to go with food I know; the first item on the list comes directly from a brilliant idea of pgrabia, expanding pgrabia's original intuition of connecting House with chili. Warning: the list reflects my ideas on chocolate, which are as extreme as my ideas on anything else, so don't be offended.
Enjoy!

House: 90% dark chocolate with chili pepper, local production, Modica (a town in Sicily), Italian.
A traditional recipe for connoisseurs. Really, really rare. The best chocolate I know.
Wilson: chocolate with hazelnut paste (gianduiotto), local production, Torino (a big city in Northwest Italy), Italian.
A heavenly combination. Elegant shape, gold-wrapped - the best-looking chocolate I know.
Cuddy: cognac-filled, cocoa-dusted milk chocolate praline, local production, Bruxelles/Brussels (Belgium's capital), Belgian.
Popular, and the cognac fits very well. It's still milk chocolate in the end, though.
Cameron: white chocolate, Côte d'Or, Belgian.
Too bland for me, but some people like this. Sorry, I never got Cameron. Or white chocolate.
Chase: (dark chocolate) thin mints, After Eight, UK (owned by Nestlé).
Very attractive, but ultimately goes on your nerves. Good in small quantities.
Thirteen: Lindor 60% cocoa, Lindt, Swiss.
Looks very good, but hides unpleasant secrets.
Foreman: 40% milk chocolate, Milka, Swiss but Kraft-owned.
Boring, with a pale violet wrapping.

Taub: milk chocolate with rum, raisin and hazelnut, Ritter Sport, German.

You tell yourself it's not great, then discover it can be addictive. 
Amber: 85% dark chocolate, Excellence 85%, Lindt Herrenschokolade, Swiss. 

Almost like House. And yet a key ingredient is missing.
Masters: milk chocolate with strawberry yogurt filling, Ritter Sport, German.

You need to grow up, kiddo. 

ETA: I was up until 2.30am yesterday (today?), talking to one of those friends you have if you have a job like mine - we have been four(!) years without seeing each other, we don't (okay, I don't) communicate well by email, and still we started talking as if it had been four days. His marriage is finished and he's dealing with shattered dreams and his daughter having an additional paternal figure and he trying to date again and he's frightened as hell because he had invested thirteen years in what he thought was the love of his life. Last time we met, he had just got his dream job (luckily that's permanent) and a daughter coming, and thought his life was heading for the happily ever after.
So if this post is wrong or stupid in anyway, all I can say is I'm sorry, I'm not at my best today.

Comments

[flywoman.livejournal.com]

I liked these!

What are the unpleasant secrets hidden by Lindor 60% cocoa?

P.S. I love catching up with old friends/colleagues at conferences. Sorry that yours has been dealing with such rough stuff, though.

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

I hate the filling of Lindor. Don't know why.
And yesterday evening (night?) was heartbreaking. He'll recover of course, but damn, why do these things have to happen?

[justjuly4.livejournal.com]

Amazing! I liked the list. Creative folk, are we? House-fans I mean.

Your comments about your choice made me smile :) Very in-character! Milka for Forman is best! I would never again look at Milka bar without thinking of you and him! Great sense of humor! Ritter Sport for Taub and Masters was fantastic!

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

Thank you, but here the creativity is yours! All I did was eating a lot of chocolate (purely for research purposes).

[pgrabia.livejournal.com]

Aw, thanks for the birthday wishes! I like this. I'm not a chocolate connoisseur so I don't think i could compare the chracters to that. I'll admit to liking milk chocolate more than dark chocolate but I like dark chocolate if it's really good quality. I'm not thrilled with Lindt chocolates, but I love Callibaut chocolate. I've probably spelled everything incorrectly here because I suck at spelling (it's embarrassing! Thank goodness for spell checker!)

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

"liking milk chocolate more than dark chocolate"
I think it's an inborn characteristic, like being left or right-handed. And you would be more of a connoisseur if you lived in Europe (and you even know how to spell connoisseur! I never see any misspellings in any fic of yours - and some of them the spell-checker doesn't get).

Happy birthday again.

[pgrabia.livejournal.com]

Thanks:)

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

oh my god, you're inside my head! I came up with something similar a few years ago! It was in reaction to there being Twilight candy (I HATE TWILIGHT WITH A PASSION) and I said why can't there be House candy?
these are the ones I thought up:
House: dark chocolate with whiskey and painkiller filling
Wilson: milk chocolate with cashews
Cuddy: dark chocolate with marzipan and progesterone
Cameron: white chocolate with caramel
Chase: milk chocolate with cherry (I know a lady who worked in a candy store for years and claims taste in candy tends to be very regionalized and she can often tell what ethnic group or what country or if they're American, what part of the country someone's from by their taste in candy. she says Aussies tend to really like any candy with cherry in it)
Amber: bitter chocolate
Foreman: bittersweet (slightly less bitter than Amber)
13: Sugar free combination milk and dark chocolate
Kutner: milk chocolate with coconut (a lot of Indian candy and desserts have coconut in them)

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

The overlap is impressive, especially since I was considering marzipan for Cuddy (the progesterone cracked me up).

A great idea about Kutner btw, I always forget him - you, on the other hand, skipped Taub :-).

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

Taub is too boring to get candy. :P

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

Taub is always on my mind because he might have the only nose in the show who's uglier than mine, and he didn't get it "fixed" despite being a cosmetic surgeon. I also like Barbra Streisand for the same reason :-).

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

I heard she did not get a nose job for two reasons: she didn't want to look like "everybody else" and she was afraid it might screw up her voice.

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

Both fantastic reasons imho, although only the first applies to me.

[pgrabia.livejournal.com]

Goes to show you where my mind is...I had an entirely different interpretation of the cherry in Chase's chocolate.

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

Explain please :-).

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

hehe. the mixed dark and milk choc in 13's bar is meant to be a bi reference.

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

Nice to know I'm perfectly choco-straight (or possibly choco-lesbian, viewed as one of my favorite kinds used to be marketed as "Herrenschokolade" - I used to buy it since it was so bitter my husband wouldn't eat it, LOL).
It anyway seems clear by the analogy that white chocolate is an abomination ;-).

[chocolate-frapp.livejournal.com]

I very definitely prefer dark chocolate to milk but I think I am naturally drawn to the more intense over the less so, also why I find House more attractive than Wilson or prefer John's music to Paul's.
I actually like white chocolate but I'm weird.

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

"I actually like white chocolate but I'm weird."
I like raw unseasoned vegetables. Including cauliflower. We're just differently weird (also, it's damn hard to find really fresh cauliflower).

[selkie3.livejournal.com]

God, this made me giggle! And now I have such a craving, and loved your descriptions of Foreman and Masters.

Most of my friends are spread around the world, and are similar to yours in that email doesn't really cut it (also, since I have not gone the Facebook route myself internet communication is difficult for them). But we saw each other last summer when one of them was getting married, and BOOM! like nothing changed at all :). I'm glad your friend has someone like you to talk to about all this and to support him.

[damigella-314.livejournal.com]

I tried facebook and I can't do it. I never know in which language to post, and some stuff is only appropriate for some friends and not others, and I know you can group them but it's such a pain. And as you said, BOOM! like time hasn't changed.
At least this time we know we'll meet again in about six months, with this particular friend. Maybe earlier if I can go to Geneva again in the fall. I loved it.