New food: chocolate with tomatoes

Mostly harmless.

I got this bar of milk chocolate with dried tomato at New Year's. papersky bought it for jonsinger because he likes new and different food. Unfortunately, Jon can't eat anything with dairy in it, so I offered him a trade (she'd gotten me a bar of dark chocolate with orange peel, which I knew would be good, but I can get chocolate with orange peel any number of places).

I had expected this to be weird and possibly wonderful, or possibly a complete failure, but weird enough that I'd been opening and eating other chocolate first. A couple of weeks ago, I decided that this would be the next chocolate bar I opened.

The bits of tomato are too small to be really noticeable, at least to me and cattitude. No real effect on flavor or texture. A supertaster, or someone with a strong aversion to tomatoes, might notice the difference. So, what we have is decent milk chocolate. As such, we probably will finish it, but we both prefer dark chocolate to milk.

The maker is "Bovetti Artisan Chocolatier," in France; it was imported by Fleur d'Olive, Richelieu, QC J3L 6S3. I see that it was marked as best before 01/31/2010, but while that might affect the quality a bit, I don't think it's why the tomato was so faint.

red-winged blackbird

callunav posted yesterday about a trip to a nature preserve, and seeing red-winged blackbirds. She said she's not used to seeing them on this coast. I don't think of them as unusual: seasonal, yes, but I'm used to finding them in Inwood Hill Park and the Bronx Zoo in the spring and summer.

On Friday afternoon, cattitude heard one, but didn't see it. This afternoon, he suggested we go out in the park and look for red-winged blackbirds. Sure, why not, just a brief walk (we were both treating today as a rest day). We heard the call before we even got to the bit of wall that overlooks a reedy bit of marsh that they like, and I spotted him almost immediately. So we stood a few minutes and watched and listened, one red-winged blackbird, possibly the first of the spring, or maybe the second (if Cattitude heard a different bird on Friday).

There've been lots of robins around lately, and an unusual number of mourning doves. The usual mallards and Canada geese.

I remember when Canada geese were rare and noteworthy, and almost entirely migratory. Now, they're about as surprising as pigeons, and in some quarters less popular. I still like them.