This is Alpha, the first-born, when he was 2YO.
This is Beta, the second-born, when he was about 2YO.
This is Gamma, the third-born, when he was about 18MO.
Of Chocolate and Strawberries
May
31
2023
I’m not a fan of the traditional chocolate-dipped strawberries. I know they’re supposed to be all fancy and gourmet and special, but they’re not good.
Of course if they’re offered I’ll take them, because strawberries are good and chocolate is good, but the way they’re usually done makes the sum worse than the parts.
And I finally figured out why – it’s a mismatch of textures. Maybe textures is the wrong word – it’s mainly the ratio of brittleness to squishiness.
The problem I have with chocolate-covered strawberries is that when I bite one, the chocolate breaks off in random-sized chunks and the strawberry retains its form. So I either get a mouthful of chocolate bits and no strawberry, or a smidgen of chocolate and a full bite of strawberry. Halfway through, most of the chocolate has broken off, so it’s just an awkward way to eat a strawberry on a stick with some chocolate crumbles.
For those materials engineers out there: using the Shore 00 hardness scale, the strawberry is in the 5-15 range and the chocolate is in the 85-95 range.
What caused me to figure it out is that we were gifted a bag of chocolate-covered freeze-dried strawberries. This one was TruFru brand, maybe there are other brands that are similar. But I had those and it was a problem trying not to eat too many at once.
What makes those good is that the textures are similar. When you bite into a chocolate-covered freeze-dried strawberry, they both break off together.
Also, they are a reasonable size, so I usually just eat them whole. As contrasted with the traditional concept of a fresh strawberry with dried chocolate – they seem to pick the largest strawberries they can. They’re going more for looks and presentation than for edibility.
Note that I do like fresh strawberries covered in chocolate, but fresh strawberries need to have a very soft chocolate, mainly a fondue. For a fondue or a chocolate fountain, the chocolate is softer than the strawberry so it works. I can take a bite of the strawberry and the chocolate comes along too, instead of trying to run away.
Also note: I did try some chocolate-covered freeze-dried raspberries, and they were not as good as the strawberries. I usually like raspberries better than strawberries, but in this context the raspberries were more bitter than the strawberries, so I didn’t like them.
But in the fifth year you shall eat its fruit, so that its yield may increase for you
Leviticus 19:25a
This little article thingy was written by Some Guy sometime around 10:36 pm and has been carefully placed in the Food category.
