Love Pets? Love Chocolate? Celebrate Both on Valentine's Day

Today is Valentine's Day and more and more people are seeing it not as simply a romantic couple's holiday but a day to remember anyone you love. For many of you that might be your pets. Yet while chocolate is popular for Valentine's gifts it isn't safe for most domesticated pets especially smaller ones. How can you combine your love of pets with a love of chocolate? We cover a charity walk every fall that does just that and now I want to introduce you to Rescue Chocolate, whose founder we talked to just this past Wednesday in an email interview.  Rescue Chocolate sent us three of their products to try out and with the help of two assistants, I did just that. All their bars are fairly traded, organic ingredients, vegan, and kosher  but depending on your allergies they may not be allergy free so just not the ingredients for each bar please.

First our Fruit Acolyte tried out their MISSION FERAL FIG bar and this is what she said: It was excellent! The dark chocolate was just sweet enough, had a nice snap. The bar itself smelled like chocolate. The fruit was sweet/tart, which was a nice surprise because my experience with dates has been more of a sickly sweet sugar-soaked variety. In the bar they were more like a nicely tart raisin. The almonds were also good. The only "problem" I'd give it is that the fruit & nuts weren't evenly distributed because they were in large pieces. So some pips were mostly nut or mostly fruit and others were just chocolate. But that's not really a problem when you're scarfing the whole bar. It was excellent overall and I would totally buy the hell out of that brand!

Next I and our Milk Chocolate and Tea Acolyte tried the FOSTER-IFFIC PEPPERMINT bar which has a lovely green wrapper to go with the mint flavor. This is a dark 66% chocolate with cocoa nibs and natural peppermint oil; the chocolate is made with cocoa beans, cocoa butter, pure cane sugar, and soy lecithin. When I unwrap this bar I see a thick nearly 1 inch thick, dark bar with 10 sections that has a strong dark cocoa and light peppermint scent.  The pieces break apart with some effort because they are so thick and the chocolate dark; I can see little nibs sticking out in various places but I don't think my camera was good enough to show that. Breaking it apart has released more of the peppermint scent but the dark chocolate fragrance reminds strong as well. There is a loud snap when I take a bite and my mouth is flooded with a wonderful dark chocolate, very lightly sweetened, and a light, cool peppermint that increases but never overpowers the chocolate with each bite. The cocoa nibs are crisp and add an extra crunch with each chew as well as an intense burst of new bitter chocolate. I love this bar, it is very well blended and interesting to eat.

Finally I tried the THE FIX bar with the same assistant, who is my husband by the way. This is a simple chocolate bar with 66% cacao content made with the basics -- cocoa beans, cocoa butter, pure cane sugar, soy lecithin, and vanilla.  As you can see it is dark in color and fairly identical to the previous two bars but without any added pieces of fruit, nuts, or cocoa nibs. It is more difficult to snap off the ten sections yet makes a softer sound when I take a bite. The immediate flavor is smooth, slightly sweet chocolate that has no bitterness at all and it is surprisingly creamy as well.  If you let a piece melt in your mouth, it melts slowly and increases the sweet and creamy flavors with a build up of the chocolate that ends up tasty a bit more bitter than chewing it allows.  Of the two bars I tried, this one really had a strong cocoa buzz, making everything seem brighter in the world around me.

There you have it, Sisters and Brothers, three bars from Rescue Chocolate for you to consider as we approach a week of remembering to care about pets on the day we might think about love for everyone special in our lives. Each bar was wonderful for all of our senses, the ingredients are simple and pure.  Add in the mission of Rescue Chocolate push it over the edge to make it Sacrament worthy.