Day 2 - A New Family and Chocolate

We are more fortunate than most people immigrating in that we have quite a strong family network in the Gold Coast. 'We' in this instance more accurately my husband. Be it family or family-in-law, they welcomed us like old friends: plenty of food served with a good dollop of first-hand advice.

'You will find everything you need at Coles or Woolworths. No I don't know if it's the same Woolworths. Taste the cheese - it's good but I miss the Gouda from South Africa. And the chocolate. It took me months to find chocolate here. Now I only buy Lindt. The Australian chocolate isn't nice. The Whittaker's is also good.'

The chocolate part wasn't news. Earlier the day we scoured the local shop for a good quality dark chocolate. Being a bit of a chocolate snob, I don't consider anything with less than 55% cocoa solids a true 'chocolate'. Belgian is good, Swiss is better. 55% cocoa is good, 75% is better.

In the end we settled for 3 slabs: Cadbury's Old Gold 75%, Cadbury's Old Gold Dark Chocolate with Almonds, and Green & Black's Organic Dark Chocolate (85%). The last turned out to be imported from Poland, and satisfyingly intense, although not made super-thin as one would expect. The Cadbury's Old Gold 75% was most disappointing. Do they use different cocoa beans? Vegetable oil? Who knows..... All I know is that I will be making chocolate brownies or ice-cream sauce with it in order to avoid eating it neat!

The Almond one turned out a pleasant surprise after that. Mostly, I guess, as one tends to chew it instead of allowing it to melt slowly on the tongue.

It didn't take a lot to convince me that I will be buying Lindt as a standard!

Bars of Cadbury and Green $ Black's dark chocolate