Review by Jack Merry: All Jacks are storytellers and I’ve been known to weave many a tale late at night by the roaring fireplace in the Robert Graves Memorial Reading Room in the Kinrowan Estate Library. And I’ve used many a Folkmanis puppet including what I call The Rodents of An Unusual Size and the lovely red fox as they are perfect for storytelling — durable and creatively made!
It’s an Ent! Well sort of. What Folkmanis calls this incredibly interesting creation is an Enchanted Tree Puppet but it really could be a small version of one of those creatures to be used in telling the story of them as they are a race of beings in Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings who closely resemble trees. They are similar to the talking trees in many traditions around the world with their name being derived from the Anglo-Saxon word for giant.
It certainly looks like an Ent — though it is what they call a character puppet with a moveable mouth, a bristly mustache and branches. You can also move its blue eyes. There are a few oversized green leaves on the top branches, and a red topped toadstool in one of its hands. This puppet is about fifteen inches tall, not as big as I’d might have liked it to be, but big enough to entertain listeners in a circle around a teller of tales.
If you combine it with one of the small Wolf puppets that Folkmanis has released, you could tell the tale of Ygggdrasil and Fenris, the wolf that tries to destroy that World Tree in the Norse myths. Or perhaps you could tell the story of the Indian Tree of the Sun and the Moon that told the future. If you’re good at voices, you can be the two aspects of the tree trunk, which depended on the time of day; in the daytime the tree spoke as a male and at night it spoke as a female. Did you know that Alexander the Great and Marco Polo are said to have consulted this leafy oracle?
Whatever you use it for, it is indeed a wonderful puppet — certainly one of the most imaginative creations from a company that has done many, many fine puppets down the years! I’ll certainly tell many a fine tale with it!
Jack Merry — I’m a fiddler, contradance caller, and a teller of tales. I like Guinness poured properly and served warm of course, red heads, and short stories with a touch of the fantastic in them. I like The Hobbit and The Lord of The Rings for my winter reading.
[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]
CRAMMING THE MACRO INTO MICROFICTION
Hello, All! Melanie here.
Last week, we learned about Demonkitty’s long anticipated show at Mr. Morgan’s new sushi counter. With Writer X’s focus on boosting Demonkitty’s burgeoning music career, there’s been little news of any writing getting done!
Without further ado…
Subject: MICROVACATION, HERE I COMES!!!!!!!!!!!
Dear Gladys,
I am writing to ask that you water my exploding gerbils while I’m away, but watch out for Miffy, she bites.
Since Demonkitty’s show last week at the sushi counter was an unparalleled success, my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and I are taking what’s known as a Microvacation to celebrate before Demonkitty’s big show at the tractor haul next week. We’re going to a ghost hotel in Bleakwood for the night!!!! This is going to be so relaxing!!!!
I have so many things planned: water aerobics, bowling, astral massage, and a special tuba playing workshop for the undead!!! Just some light activity for the first two hours after our arrival. You see, it’s a microvacation, Gladsy, you have to fit MORE in less time.
Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going. Well, I went to a meeting of the Ink Black Coffee Club Critique Group and it turns out no one in our writing group has gotten any real writing done since NaNoMochaChocaLatte.
After some reflection, we all discovered that we’re feeling very unrecognized for all our hard work as writers. See, that’s the thing about writing Galdsy, you can pour hours and hours and HOURS into a half finished rough draft and no one throws a parade!!! The conditions under which writers must toil before anyone says boo are ABSOLUTELY INHUMANE!!!!!
But I digress. We’ve all decided that the thing that will give us both the writing recognition we feel we deserve AND give us motivation to write is to release a microfiction anthology.
Now Gladys, I know you’re not a writer and the ways of writing are very hard for nonwriters like yourself to decipher—hang on, Miffy is chewing off her brother Milton’s ear.
As I was saying,
Well. There went Milton. Just a pile of ash. Good thing I still have Miffy, Gordon, Mango, Mitsy, and Jordan Peterson’s Ego!!!! And even better that you’ll be coming over to keep them watered while I’m away living my best life for the next 20 hours!!!!!!
As I was saying. The ways of writing are hard for nonwriters to decipher and so I’m sure you have never heard of microfiction. Microfiction is a form of flash fiction that ranges from 100 – 500 words. This means it’s EXTREMELY EASY to write and I already know I’m going to be AMAZING at this.
Usually when I write a story that’s long, I run out of ideas about ninety pages in. BUT since our critique group has set the limit to 300 words, this is going to be a WALK IN THE PARK.
Hang on. Mitsy has set fire to my suitcase and three of my duvets. No one could have seen that coming!!!!!!
…Probably shouldn’t let the exploding gerbils run around on our bed.
Anyhoo, where was I? Right!!!! 300 words is going to be incredibly easy and I have NO SHORTAGE OF IDEAS. This microfiction is going to be all things to all people!!!! It’s going to have high magic, betrayal, vampire sex, AND the sudden revelation that an orphan is the child of the prophecy. IT’s going to have thrilling dialogue, at least twelve elves, an epic battle, and a scene in a fishing village that will REALLY drive home my theme about the human connection to our grandfathers.
Gladys, I’m so excited!!!! This is going to be my next published work!!!
Goodbye, Mango. You lived as you loved; pooping uncontrollably and chewing through discarded paper towel rolls.
To celebrate my coming success, I’m going to add hang gliding and learning German to my microvacation. There’s absolutely nothing that can rain on my parade!!!!!!
Miffy just bit off Jordan Peterson’s Ego’s tail.
Eh. He didn’t need it.
Now I just have to figure out two things: how to fit my hang gliding equipment into my carry-on suitcase AND how to fit an epic battle into three words!!!!! EPIC BATTLE TAKES TWO!!!!!
You’re coming to the show at the tractor haul, right????
Pages next week, Galdsy!!!!! KEEP A CLOSE EYE ON YOUR FINGERS!!!!!
Review by Gary Whitehouse: I had a snappy opening line all prepared for this review (“Move over, Trader Joe’s ‘These Peanuts Go On A Date’ Bars”) but it turns out I’m too late. As usual. First, there have been lengthy discussions on various forums and blogs for quite some time in which these two items were compared; and second, TJ’s bar has been discontinued as of late 2022.
I was never a massive fan of TJ’s bar, but I tended to buy a few boxes of them per year. I like having bar-type snacks around to take on a hike or a short road trip or just for those mornings when breakfast was a little early or small. Relatively low sodium is a must for me, and Joe’s bars typically are much better in this regard than your average protein, granola or trail mix bars – I’m a fan of the peach and pumpkin seasonals, of which I usually get two or three boxes when they come around in summer and fall. The peanut-date bars were a good occasional addition to the lineup. I’m not a big date eater, but the addition of peanuts to these mellowed the flavor somewhat. My one objection was that they tended to make your fingers sticky, which other reviewers noted as well.
I like the taste of this Lärabar offering better than Trader Joe’s. The semi-sweet chocolate mitigates dates’ cloying tendency with a little cocoa tartness, which is enhanced by the dates’ slightly tart finish. The use of maple syrup also gives a nice earthy touch that is sweet but not too sweet. The nuts (peanuts and cashews) are ground pretty finely, which makes the mouth feel more grainy than I prefer, but overall the experience is pleasant. And they’re less sticky than TJ’s now defunct product, unless they get too warm in the package. So keep these cool. Some reviewers prefer them refrigerated, but I wouldn’t go that far, as to me that dulls the flavors.
The bar’s name is a typical bit of over-inflation. First, not everything with dark chocolate in it is a truffle. Truffles by definition are a candy with a ganache center. You can’t just coat an apple in dark chocolate and call it an apple pie truffle. Second, “caramel?” Caramel is “sugar or syrup heated until it turns brown” used as a sweetener or coloring agent in foods. Maple syrup is already brown, and these bars are already sweet from the dates and dark from the dark chocolate. So calling this thing a chocolate caramel truffle won’t fool anybody who knows or cares anything about food, and may actually be misleading. Plus the name doesn’t even mention dates, which are the main ingredient.
Nutritionally, as compared to TJ’s there are some tradeoffs. The Lärabar has higher fat content, more calories, and twice the sodium; but more fiber and the same amount of protein.
Points subtracted for the name and some nutrition facts, noted. Otherwise, these are pretty good with coffee or milky black tea. But the fact that they’re chocolate knocks them off of my “snack” list. I love chocolate, but to me it is candy or dessert. I don’t want chocolate in a mid-morning pick-me-up. Sweet (as opposed to savory) snack items containing grains, fruit and nuts but no chocolate are getting harder to find. And if I’m looking for a chocolate treat, I probably won’t look to these bars with 210 calories, 9 fat grams, and 130 mg of sodium as a morning snack, either.
Lärabar’s Chocolate Peanut Caramel Truffle Bars (or rather, chocolate date nut bars) taste fine, but they’re probably not going in my shopping cart.
Gary Whitehouse (he, him), a lifelong resident of the U.S. Pacific Northwest, is a retired reporter, editor, and government communicator. He’s also a lifelong lover of books and music, which he has been writing about online for nearly a quarter of a century. His other passions include birding, standard poodles, chocolate, coffee, and craft ales.
Review by Iain Delaney: Stingray was a 1964 puppet series from Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Like their other 1960s series, the show was a combination of sophisticated marionettes and miniatures. Stingray was the first color TV series to be made in the UK, with hopes of selling it to a US network. In the end, Stingray appeared on the ITV network in the UK and was syndicated in the US and the rest of the world.
The series lasted for 39 half-hour episodes and concerned the adventures of the titular submarine and her crew. Stingray is crewed by Captain Troy Tempest, navigator and hydrophone operator Lieutenant “Phones” Sheridan, and Marina, a refugee member of an amphibious race. Together they investigate nautical mysteries, explore the oceans, and defend the surface against Titan, the ruler of the undersea city of Titanica.
Stingray is housed in an underground pen beneath Marineville, the headquarters of the World Aquanaut Security Patrol (W.A.S.P.). The launch sequence begins when Troy and Phones board Stingray by sitting in their command chairs, which descend into Stingray on poles. The chairs lock into position and the poles retract. The submarine pen floods, the round ocean door opens, and Stingray is launched into the sea like a torpedo.
As a submarine, Stingray is without peer. Atomic powered, it can reach a speed of 400 knots on the surface and 600 knots when submerged. Maximum depth is listed at over 36,000 feet.
The die-cast metal toy from Corgi is something that fans have been waiting for since the series first aired. It has arrived to mixed reaction, with some complaining about the accuracy, the lack of features, or the price. At £49.95, this isn’t a cheap toy, but fans have already bought out the limited edition of 750 copies on the official website.
The packaging is a black cardboard box with a large plastic window on the top and front. The toy is on a green cardboard plinth and is fastened down by a number of twist ties. The details, paint and decals are first rate, and the model looks screen-accurate to my eyes. Under the plinth are a collector’s card, a clear plastic stand, and a pair of ‘sting missile’ torpedoes. The torpedoes are spring-fired, but without removing all the twist ties I can’t find the launching mechanism, and I’m not prepared to do that just yet. Maybe I’ll get a second one when the standard edition is available.
I would say that the limited edition is a very fine but perhaps expensive addition to a Stingray fan’s collection. The standard edition at £39.99 is easier to recommend.
Iain Delaney was born in the UK but moved to Canada at an early age. The UK heritage explains his fascination with British TV SciFi, including Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet, UFO, and, of course, Dr. Who. After fumbling through high school, he fumbled through university, emerging with a degree in physics. With no desire to pursue graduate studies he discovered that a bachelor’s degree had little to no job prospects, so he took up a career in computer programming. In his off time he reads, watches TV and movies, collects toys, and makes attempts at writing. To that end he has a small number of articles published in role-playing game magazines and won two honorable mentions in the Writers of the Future contest. He is working on an urban fantasy YA trilogy and entertains delusions of selling it to movies or TV.
[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]
ROCK THE SUSHI SHOP!
Hello, All! Melanie here.
When last we heard from Writer X, she had successfully terrorized Mr. Morgan of Mr. Morgan’s Food Emporium & Things Nicely Priced into booking the band DemonKitty for the grand opening of the new sushi counter.
There’s an old joke in the music world. It goes like this…
Q: How do you get a musician to complain?
A: Give them a gig.
Regardless that the sushi show would fulfill one of Tryxy the demon’s musical dreams, when confronted with success, some of us panic like so many writers confronted with a blank page. Rather than practice, Tryxy spent most of his time finding literally anything else to do as the date of the show clipped toward him. Writer X and Tod Boadkins, two writers deeply familiar with avoiding writing, looked on in horror.
Without further ado…
Subject: IT CLEARLY SAYS TO TASTE THE RAINBOW!!!!!
Dear Gladys,
All I can say is that things didn’t go as planned!!!! Last week, Tryxy and #bestkitten didn’t practice for their show at all. To be fair, that wasn’t #bestkitten’s fault. She always shows up for practice, but Tryxy is the one that’s a whole #MOOD.
Finally, the night before the gig, but BEFORE we learned that our internet had been intercepted by gophers, the writing appeared on the wall. That’s because Tryxy is a high level demon from the Void of Asheput and can make his calendar reminders appear on the living room wall. There it was, written in a demonic scrawl over my case of faberge eggs:
It was CLEAR that it was time to get down to business and defeat the Huns, but even then, Tryxy dragged his feet.
“It’s fine,” he said. “It’s not like there will be anyone there!”
That’s when I showed him the poster I hired some gophers to make to promote the gig!!!!!
THAT was the writing on the wall he needed!!! I should have showed him the poster a week before!!!!! Tryxy went into a cold panic. How was he supposed to get months of practice in on a single night?? I told him that, if anyone could do it, a demon could, but he wasn’t consoled.
That’s when he and #bestkitten concocted a WHOLE NEW PLAN to deal with the fact that they hadn’t practiced any of their songs in months. No, it wasn’t to borrow another time machine from the library, go back in time and practice. You know how long the waiting list is for those time machines!!! And no, it wasn’t to load up on vitamin B12 and espresso shots and practice all night. It wasn’t even to hire a bunch of gophers a session musicians!!!!
Ultimately Tryxy decided they could take one of two paths. Either they could do any of the things I’ve listed above ORRRRRR they could host a skittles mukbang on their YouTube channel.
The logic went like this: “We COULD practice and still be not so good because we haven’t practiced in several months. OR we could make our fans love us so much that, no matter how bad we play, they’ll think we’re cool.”
Everyone knows that fans love nothing more than a good band mukbang. So Tryxy and #bestkitten hot-footed down to the store to buy several pounds of skittles.
It was about that time that the gopher incident happened. I WILL ABSOLUTELY NOT GO INTO THE GOPHER INCIDENT. THERE’S NO TIME, GLADYS!!!!!
Okay, I will. It went like this: I owed the gophers money. NOT from the poster, but for the faberge egg I bought off one of their facebook marketplace ads. I didn’t pay them. They ate my internet.
Tryxy and #bestkitten set up their camera and each ate two bags of skittles and talked about how amazing the show was going to be and how they were counting on everyone’s support because it’s been a lifelong dream to play at a sushi counter. Then they discovered that they hadn’t been recording.
So they did it again. But felt too scripted to repeat the stuff about counting on everyone’s support, so they ate two more bags of skittles and talked about how they had come to be best friends. Then, they discovered that #bestkitten had a piece of toilet paper sticking to her left whiskers the whole time and had to scrap and record again.
Four or five attempts later, when they were both slightly green, I gave them the great news that the internet had been restored!!!!!
The next morning, my boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and I had to carry the two of them to the sushi counter on a stretcher. Which was fine. They only had to play for fifteen minutes but they also only have three songs which they finished in eight minutes. That’s when they decided to do a “jam session,” and in a twist no one saw coming, both of them got sick. Fortunately, Tryxy is a demon so when the upchuck started chucking, he magically turned the sick into streams of rainbows pouring from their mouths AND THE CROWD WENT WILD!!!
They have a gimmick!!!!!!! Now we just have to make sure they eat at least ten pounds of skittles before each show.
Anyhoo, I’m sure you’re dying to know how my writing is going but right now I am up to my ears booking shows for DemonKitty!!!!! I’ve got all the best venues lined up!!!! I booked them playing Senior Night at the Bingo Emporium, the bus stop outside the tractor haul the next night, and the launch of the new bathrooms they installed at the Gas and Guzzler in Bleakwood!!!! We’re going places!!!!
Review by Robert Tilendis: The Whole Foods web page for this product provides very little information, except for the essentials: 72% cacao, and the ingredients: organic chocolate liquor, organic cane sugar, and organic cocoa butter, with the usual warning that it may contain tree nuts, milk, eggs, wheat and soy.
As might be expected from a chain with Whole Foods’ reputation, all ingredients are organic, fair trade, and socially conscious. (Well, the ingredients themselves aren’t socially conscious, but you get my drift.) In this case, the front of the box notes that “a portion of the proceeds helps fund the education of children in the Kyela district of Tanzania.” And yes, the cacao is from Tanzania.
Now to the meat, so to speak. The bar weighs in at a standard 3.5 ounces; it’s rather wide and flat, and indented to allow you to break off large tablets. The color is a true dark chocolate color, darker than milk chocolate but not quite as dark as others I’ve sampled — it looks about right for 72%. It’s a bit brittle, but this seems to be subject to change depending on the ambient temperature — we’ve just come off a hot spell here, and it was rather softer when the temperatures were around 90.
The flavor itself is definitely dark chocolate, a little dry, with not much in the way of overtones except for a slight earthiness and a little tartness in the aftertaste. The sugar content is just enough to take the edge off the bitterness of the chocolate.
All in all, this isn’t the most arresting chocolate I’ve tasted, but it’s certainly adequate if you’ve got to have some chocolate right now.
Review by Robert Tilendis: Trader Joe’s offers a variety of confections, most of them involving chocolate. The latest one to cross my path is the Organic Dark Chocolate PB&J Minis.
I can hear you asking “What is this?” I suspect it’s a riff on Reese’s peanut butter cups, without the cup. It comes in a 3.5 oz. (100 g) bag (resealable) containing eight pieces. Individually wrapped. (I can understand the reasoning — better that than a large lump of candies, but in my household, overpackaging earns a demerit.) In this incarnation, the “J” in PB&J is raspberry fruit filling, not quite a jelly, but more like a jelly than anything else. It is, of course, covered in chocolate.
However, the proof is in the eating.
As might be expected, the dark chocolate covering is slightly brittle, and breaks apart readily to flood the mouth with the flavor of raspberry jam. In fact, the raspberry pretty much overpowers the peanut butter — or it would if raspberry jam stuck to the roof of your mouth. Actually, the peanut butter taste is there, but it takes a while to make itself known. Needless to say, there’s not a lot of nuance here: the flavors are nicely blended, without a lot of subtlety. I will say, though, that the tartness of the raspberry cuts the buttery qualities of the peanut butter nicely, while the chocolate offers a good foundation.
I don’t know if I’ll go searching for these at my local Trader Joe’s, but they are a nice treat if you’re in the mood for PB&J and don’t feel like making a sandwich. And the chocolate is a plus. But be warned: it occurs to me that it would be very easy to work through a whole bag without realizing it.
[Introduction: Melanie Stormm continues her humorous series of posts about the misdirected emails she’s been getting. Stormm is a multiracial writer who writes fiction, poetry, and audio theatre. Her novella, Last Poet of Wyrld’s End is available through Candlemark & Gleam. She is currently the editor at the SPECk, a monthly publication on speculative poetry by the SFPA.]
THE CRIPPLING FLAMES OF SUCCESS
Hello, All! Melanie here.
It’s been a busy few weeks for our friends in Cradensburg, NH!
Thanks to a charm offensive involving a truckload of hot pink stabilizer balls, Tryxy the demon (and lead songwriter of the music duo Demonkitty) finally has the opportunity to fulfill his musical dream of playing at a grand opening of the sushi counter in the local grocery. The only trouble is, now that he’s got the gig, he’s acting strangely.
Meanwhile, X is pursuing her dream of becoming the “next big epic fantasy writer of all time” by forgoing writing. Instead, she’s furthering her writing career by focusing on self-care. Namely, X wants to dismantle her internalized fat phobia. She’s doing this about as well as the rest of us: through cycles of stress eating and self-loathing.
This is to say that we manage to be our own stumbling block in pursuing individual happiness.
Without further ado…
Subject: Watch out for the stumbling block, Gladuys!!!!!!!!
Dear Gladys,
I need you to come over to my house write away and evaluate Tryxy. Since I booked his gig for the grand opening of Mr. Morgan’s new and newly rebuilt sushi counter, I think…well, I think Tryxy has turned into a writer. I don’t know how else to explain the strangeness of his behavior!!!!!
Your cousin Blanche says you’ve been busy rebuilding your house that burnt down New Year’s Day, but I told her you could probably squeeze in the time to drop everything and come over with some emergency raspberry whoopie pies and AS MANY HAZMAT SUITS AS YOU CAN SPARE.
My diet is doing fine. Why do you ask?
The only thing is that you need to watch out for the new stumbling block by my front door. It’s gotten everyone lately; the mailman, the process server, the mailman again, Tryxy, me, a free-range neighborhood chicken, Mr. Morgan, basically EVERYBODY.
I would remove the stumbling block, but with Demonkitty’s BIG SHOW in just eight days, I need all of my attention on figuring out what’s going on with Tryxy. I have to help him turn back from being A WRITER!!!!!
Hold me, Galdsy, I’m scared I may be too late!!!!!!! Will write again soon!!!!!
xox,
X
P.S. Really need those hazmat suits!!!! Can you make mine pink?????
Subject: What does this look like to you?????
Dear Gladys,
I’m afraid that living with two writers has caused Tryxy to become infected with our disease. With just five days left until his show at Mr. Morgan’s, he SHOULD be devoting all his time to practicing but he hasn’t gone ANYWHERE NEAR his drum kit.
The last three days he’s spent most of his time doing the following:
1.) He’s taken up Extreme Canning as a hobby. If you’re not familiar with Extreme Canning, it’s when you try to fill your basement with a pickled version of at least one of every food group. Our kitchen is a disaster.
2.) He told me he was going to practice all yesterday afternoon, but when I checked on him, he had downloaded that new Quaint Cabbage Farmer™ game and spent most of the evening watering digital cabbages on his homestead while Golden Girls played in the background. When I asked him about practicing he said, “I’m sure it’s fine. Everything’s fine. It’s all fine. This is fine. Practicing. Yes. It’s fine. It’s not like I’ll have an audience.”
3.) When he isn’t canning or playing Quaint Cabbage Farmer™, I’ve found him crying in the bathroom as he watches Lil Nas X’s latest video and saying that “he’ll never measure up.”
The worst happened just this morning. As I’m sure I mentioned WHEN I ASKED FOR THE HAZMAT SUITS, a sentient black mold named Bruce has moved into our breezeway. This has made getting the mail very complicated as Bruce is aggressive and tries to poke us with a stick whenever we pass. As you know, Tryxy isn’t very fond of doing housework that requires being in an unheated room like the breezeway, but as soon as he heard that Bruce poked the mail carrier in the eye, his face lit up and he volunteered to singlehandedly eradicate BRuce.
My boyfriend, award nominated fantasy writer Tod Boadkins, and I looked on in horror as Tryxy merrily donned rubber gloves and took up a flame thrower and skipped out into the freezing cold breezeway.
As the roar of flames and Bruce’s screams filled the air, my boyfriend whispered to me: “My god, he has one job: practice. But he will do literally ANYTHING else but that. I’ve never seen anyone who isn’t a writer task avoid and procrastinate so fast and so hard. Do you think we’ve…infected him somehow?? I feel like this is somehow our fault.”
I don’t know what to do, Glayds!!!!
How am I supposed to get any writing done when I can be worrying about whether I’ve infected Tryxy with my task avoidance????!!!!!
Pages next week, Gladys!!!
xox,
X
THIS IS
ALL
FINE.
I HAVE
PICKLED
EGGS,
PICKLED
JALAPEÑOS,
PICKLED
PICKLES,
PICKLED
BRUCE.
IT’S
FINE. IT’S
NOT LIKE
THERE WILL
BE AN
AUDIENCE.
By John King Tarpinian: Mentally, I spent a couple hundred thousand dollars on Saturday. Rare Books LA is a roving book show with a mix of $10 pulps to first editions priced at thousands of dollars. This show was held in Pasadena the week before the Antiquarian Book Show in San Francisco. That meant many of the higher end dealers could come here then move north for the other show. Dealers from Germany, England, Ireland, and Australia were in attendance, along with local vendors. Dealers specializing in everything from vintage cookbooks to our beloved genre books.
Their next show will be going back to L.A.’s beautiful Union Station. This is great because you can take the Metro there and then afterwards walk across the street to Philippe’s, credited for inventing the beef dip sandwich.
As the pictures here show, there were hundreds of genre books to spend next month’s mortgage on.
Review by April Gutierrez: Applewood bacon, alderwood smoked salt, hickory smoked almonds, plus guajillo and pasilla chilis – oh my! This exotic selection of ingredients are just a few of the flavor surprises in store for chocolate aficionados, such as myself, when they reach for a Vosges candy bar. Definitely not your garden variety chocolates here.
The concept behind Vosges’ exotic chocolates is best explained by their mission statement:
The Vosges Haut-Chocolat mission is to create a luxury chocolate experience rooted in a sensory journey of bringing about awareness to indigenous cultures through the exploration of spices, herbs, roots, flowers, fruits, nuts, chocolate and the obscure.
Cultural awareness in my chocolate? Hm. Well-meaning, definitely, but let’s be honest, when you’ve got a chocolate craving, what’s paramount is how good the chocolate is. So I’ll focus on the “sensory journey” and see if Vosges delivers what it promises.
Three varieties of Vosges bars were provided for review: Mo’s Dark Bacon Bar, Barcelona Bar and the Oaxaca Exotic Candy Bar. The first thing of note is that the bars are downright tiny. Each is just 3 ounces and 90 calories or under, ideal for someone needing just a taste, such as a reviewer. But I can only imagine that a chocolate fanatic with an itch to scratch will probably weep at the size and consume all three at once without a second thought.
A mild disclaimer here: I don’t think of myself as a chocolate snob, but I know my likes (plain dark chocolate) and dislikes (plain milk or white chocolate). I’m fine with nuts and I’ve developed a definite taste for salted dark chocolate. So I approached these bars with an open mind and a desire to be wowed, or at the very least, pleased. I sampled the bars across two different days and in three different ways: room temperature, refrigerator chilled and freezer chilled.
The bars definitely fared best at room temperature, imparting the most flavor during that tasting. Unfortunately for all three bars, the flavor was somewhat disappointing. The Barcelona Bar was salty, but there was no real sense of almonds, no satisfying crunch. The milk chocolate was decent, creamy rather than waxy, but largely unremarkable. Mo’s Dark Chocolate Bacon Bar was even saltier, which worked decently with the darker chocolate, but the saltiness was just sensation and not very bacony. And as for the Oaxacan bar . . . it has a bit of a kick in the aftertaste, but the flavor of the bar itself isn’t memorable.
I found myself perplexed at my ho-hum reaction to these bars. On paper they sound marvelous, so where’s the disconnect? After the second tasting, I hit on the idea of trying an unrelated chocolate, as something of a control to compare to. So before trying another round of Vosges, I sampled a square of plain dark chocolate (73%) from the freezer, and immediately had my answer: the chocolate itself was bold and rich, commandeering my taste buds in a welcome and pleasant way.
Returning to the Vosges, I tried each again, focusing on the chocolate, rather than the additions. And there it was: the chocolate in all three just doesn’t stack up against the salt and spice. What should be an equal marriage of flavors and texture is lopsided, and not in a good way.
Vosges’ mission is certainly a lofty and ambitious one, and I applaud their desire to experiment (I’ve sampled and enjoyed their ginger/wasabi bar in the past), but the chocolate just isn’t up to snuff in these bars. Which is to say I won’t go out of my way to get more in the future. A pity.
April Gutierrez, Japanese fan. A Green Man Review reviewer. A life-long lover of chocolate and felines, she indulges in the former frequently and shares her abode with a rather spoiled specimen of the latter. She can most commonly be found with her nose buried in a book, a cup of good tea in hand and Japanese pop music playing in the background.
