Dark Chocolate

Amazingly, you can get Mexican food down the street from my house (no it's not nearly as good as Gordo's [or Anna's] but it is ok and the guacamole is great). I'm not really missing that many foods as one might expect. The Ethiopian food here is great (much better than home), I do miss real black pepper a little bit, but I digress. The one thing I have really been on a quest for is dark chocolate.

One might think since so much coffee grows here, they could grow a little cacao. But you would be wrong (Julia maybe you can explain it). There is milk chocolate here, and there are plenty of bad packaged choco-cookies (I even resorted to TimTams), and there are pretty good pastries in many of the coffee shops, but not a lot of the high
percentage stuff.

I understand that some people prefer milk chocolate to dark, and while I do not claim to understand them, they would be quite content here. However personally I have been looking all over for the real deal. I even asked some of my Ethiopian friends, and while I think I adequately explained what dark chocolate was, they were unable to help.

One thing I have been doing recently, and not just in search of Scharffenberger, is stop into grocery stores when I am out and about. You see, no two grocery stores are the same, and while I can get my meatstockless ramen at one grocery store, it is non-existent at many others. In fact, just yesterday on such a expedition I found Crest toothpaste!

Anyway, I was heading to Mexico the other day, and low and behold I saw a Grand Opening sign for a store called Rose's Chocolates. Needless to stay this had to be investigated, so I made a special trip over there on Saturday. And, I am now the proud owner of a bar of Lindt dark chocolate, 75birr (about 8 bucks) and well worth it. It melted a little on the way home, I stopped at a grocery store, they
even had Gillette Sensor razor blades! they also had dark chocolate (only 30something birr).

I am happy, but someone really should start a cacao farm around here.