Dark Chocolate...the highs and lows

Dark chocolate is chocolate without (or with very little) milk solids added and can be used to refer to unsweetened, bittersweet, or semisweet. It is produced by adding sugar and fat (like lecithin) to the cocoa, and is classified based on the percentage (by weight) of cocoa solids in the bar.  Unsweetened or bitter chocolate is cocoa solids and fat without added sugar; this type is usually used for baking.

After being removed from their pods, cocoa beans are fermented, dried, and roasted. Their shells are then discarded, leaving the "nib." Chocolate liquor is the paste that results from grinding the nib.

Some studies say that dark chocolate helps to lower blood pressure. But don't think that eating milk chocolate is going to help your blood pressure... it's dark chocolate that's "good" for you and is an antioxidant. Keep in mind that dark chocolate is still ripe with calories, so if you want to incorporate it into your diet, you'll need to make concessions elsewhere.

That little lesson on dark chocolate stemmed from this past weekend being Easter, which in my family means that my mother hides plastic Easter eggs filled with candy or an Easter basket filled with candy and other goodies. Because of this whole "Paleo thing", I don't eat candy, and I haven't had any sweets since Lent started. However, after reading various articles and blogs about Paleo, I noticed that most people on the modern caveman diet will eat dark chocolate. So I told my mom I could have dark chocolate for Easter... and she provided in abundance.

It was delicious!! I used to (and still secretly do) love white chocolate, the sweetest stuff out there, so dark chocolate was always too bitter for me. (In case you were wondering, white chocolate is sugar, milk, and cocoa butter, sans cocoa solids. The use of "chocolate" in describing this treat is a bit of a stretch.) However, after not eating sugar for so long, I didn't think the dark chocolate was bitter at all! Unfortunately, this meant that I ate an entire chocolate bunny throughout the day on Monday. Stop those stares! I didn't eat it all in one sitting! I instead spread it out over my trip home, beginning in Atlanta, continuing on the plane, and finishing it off once I got back to Texas. Even more unfortunately, I ended up curled in a ball on my couch clutching my stomach, with Never again! running through my head. Hence I'm restricting myself to one small piece of chocolate per week, which means that I should run out of dark chocolate sometime in November. I'm putting the chocolate in my freezer now...