Hello, my name is Tiara....

....and I'm a chocoholic.

Go on, laugh, but it's true. I have a major addiction and it gets worse by the day as I find more and more varieties of my drug of choice.

My current supply? In order of quality (the highest at the bottom, always end with the best...*wink*):

Bulk bin semi-sweet chocolate bits- I sprinkle a few of them on my oatmeal in the morning and suddenly I don't hate eating it quite so much! (the addition of peanut butter makes it even better...*drooling*)

Whittaker's dark chocolate- This is a NZ brand they sell in big bars, but unlike the big bar chocolate in the US, this is actually kickass chocolate, WAY worth buying. The snap is pretty clean, it melts well, no gritty texture here, it is really smooth on the tongue....yummy, and great when you have a craving you need sated immediately!

Whittaker's bittersweet chocolate with cocoa nibs- Just enough sweetness that you can eat more than one bite, with little pieces of cocoa nibs (shelled cocoa beans that are then chopped up) that make for an interesting texture and double chocolate treat!

Lindt Excellence 85% cocoa chocolate- This is a hardcore chocolate. The first time I bought one of these bars I popped a whole square in my mouth, then promptly choked it down and ran for water to rinse my mouth of the wickedly bitter taste! I was horrified at the taste of it. After a few days I decided to brave it again, and this time broke off a square, smelled the chocolate, let it warm slightly in my hand, and then nibbled off a corner and let it melt on my tongue while I concentrated on tasting more than just the lack of sugar. 30 minutes later the square was gone and I wasn't chugging water. I think of it as retraining my tastebuds to appreciate chocolate in a more "true to nature" form and now buy a bar every now and then to repeat the process, reset things, and remind myself of how good chocolate can be without all the sugar.

Dagoba Chai- Milk chocolate with bits of crystallised ginger and chai spices blended in to make a spicy treat. Potent like a good cup of chai! You wouldn't eat a whole bar of this all at once (would be a costly habit anyway), but it makes for a good nibble while trying to warm up in the winter (like it is here right now!)

Dagoba Lavender- Lavender and bits of dried blueberries blended into dark chocolate make this one of the more unusual chocolates I've tried. The floral note reminds me a bit of chocolate-dipped rose turkish delights! I can't eat more than one bite at a time, but that's not a bad thing. I used to hate the thought of any flowers in food. But I like orchids in cookies and salad, I now love jasmine tea when I used to think it tasted like perfume, and I like rose turkish delights and rosewater in cocktails, so maybe I'll grow to like lavender in chocolate? Who knows, I'm still forming my opinion about the combination, but if someone gave me another bar of it I wouldn't be mad so that says something...

I adore Dagoba chocolate in general. Sustainability-minded, organic, they know where their cacao comes from--from pod to finished bar--and I think that's a beautiful thing! So if you are a fellow chocoholic, stop in at your nearest whole food store and hunt down a bar in your favorite flavor, you won't be sorry!

Valrhona Manjari Orange- This dark chocolate has a rather acidic tang to it which plays really nicely off the tiny bits of dried, candied orange nuggets that you taste in each nibble. I don't normally love orange in chocolate, but this one actually works well!

That is the priciest bar in my house by far (Chris brought it home for Valentine's day). My love of this brand is purely Chris' fault! That fucker actually took me into a gourmet food store to cheer me up one day (dangerous venture for all involved since I could spend hours and entirely too much money in one) and walked me past the chocolate, and then STOPPED! Well, that was it. Confronted with all the chocolate I had only read about in foodie magazines I couldn't see straight. Who puts the chocolate display at the front of the store where everyone has to walk by it? Brilliant marketers, that's who! Anyhow, the sleek black packages drew me in, all nicely lined up on the shelves, varieties of cacao from all over the world...mmmm... It was on sale so I could justify getting one bar, I can't remember which one it was now, some really dark variety. I left the store with just that and a tube of peppercorns (so our bank account survived). I rationed that chocolate out for weeks and loved every bit of it. So this bar for Valentine's Day was greeted with a ridiculous happy dance!

Now, before you go thinking that I eat mass quantities of chocolate everyday and spend tons of money on it I have to explain something. I eat good chocolate very slowly...and I keep it out of "munching" reach. I break off a piece, then put it away, then go and enjoy the piece because I know if I don't I'll end up mindlessly munching instead of enjoying the complexity of flavor and wicked experience a bite of good chocolate brings. I know it may sound crazy, but I think I eat my chocolate in the same way wine lovers savor a good glass of wine. Sure, sometimes I want to just munch something and so I'll pick up a candy bar and have my sugar fix, but that is hormonal binging, much akin to a wine lover downing box wine to get drunk.

Anyway, there you have it... So tell me, what is YOUR addiction?? What do you stockpile and protect from the rummaging of others?