The Cooking Dish

Interview with The Chocolate Conspiracy

by 1 Comment

Sometime near the end of Summer, beginning of Fall I had the delightful opportunity to meet with AJ Wentworth who is the owner, founder, chief chocolatier, and jefe of The Chocolate Conspiracy located in Salt Lake City, UT (900 S 265 E Salt Lake City, UT 84111, to be exact). I had a great time interviewing AJ and learned a lot about his business and what it takes to specialize in the raw chocolate business. Unfortunately because of website issues, I was unable to post the interview until now.

But the story begins before the interview. I met AJ at the 2013 Honey Bee Festival in Salt Lake City where two things brought my attention to his booth: 1) free chocolate samples (obvious attention grabber there), and 2) the really cool throwback art on the chocolate bars, and 3) it was RAW chocolate. My curiosity was peaked. Apparently I’m a sucker for raw gourmet chocolate wrapped in retro Asian-inspired art.
Continue Reading

The Best Halloween Candy — No, Seriously.

by 5 Comments

I’ve gotta’ say, Halloween is a dangerous holiday. It’s too easy to buy candy long before October 31st; it’s even easier to justify buying it early when you say to yourself, “Oh, I’ll stick it in the top cupboard and save it until then…”

Yeah right.

I don’t know of anybody who has ever successfully done that. Before too long, it just starts gnawing away at you because you know it’s there… eat me, eat me, eat me… *sigh* … Two years ago I bought my Halloween candy on October 31st, Halloween Day. I went to the store to find nearly empty shelves and ended up coming back with the stuff nobody wants: stale pumpkin peeps, Sunmaid raisins, and a mini-size candybar mix. Mini size. Really? Halloween is about packing in the goodies, not skimping on treats that you don’t even have to chew before swallowing.

So this year I decided to–yep, you guessed it–buy my goodies early. I bought them two weeks ago during a “weak moment” on aisle 5. Needless to say, I’m going to have to buy more. Dangit. At least there is one huge benefit to buying your Halloween candy early; besides having to buy and eat twice the amount of candy for Halloween, you get the best of the best. No stale pumpkin peeps for me this year.

So this year I’ve rounded up a list of the 10 best Halloween candies (I cheated and added more than one candy to some numbers), that if I had to buy twice this month, I wouldn’t complain.

In no particular order, behold the list…
Continue Reading

An Awesome Gift + Where I’ve Been

by 3 Comments

Hey folks, I can’t believe it’s been over a month since my last post. Wow! In blogging terms, 1 month or longer between posts is equivalent to shooting myself in the foot.

But before we get into that, and above all else, I wanted to send a grateful shout out to Maren, my friend from Seevetal, Germany (near Hamburg). Over Christmas Maren sent me a really really awesome Christmas package full of German delight!
Continue Reading

2nd Annual QA Christmas Candy Party

by 3 Comments

Excuse me for a second while I fill you in on the my latest happenings and not-so-adventurous adventures, then we’ll get to the real stuff.

It’s been a while since I’ve had the chance to sit and down and work on The Cooking Dish, which is unfortunate because I have some delicious foods I’ve been wanting to post. Unexpectedly, however, I now have 4 to 5 days to work on it, if I’m up to it. For the past two weeks I’ve been fighting off a cough and intermittent fevers, and I finally thought I was getting better… BUT I woke up last night at 2:00 a.m. with a sever chest pain which kept me up for the rest of the night. Straight away this morning I contacted the family doctor and after a visit to the office left with a note saying, “stay home from work, you’ve got bronchitis and other junk” and some prescriptions to fill. Oh joy. I’m personally not a fan of involuntarily taking time off from work, but I don’t want to infect my co-workers either (you guys can thank me later–when I get back to the office).
Continue Reading