a peek inside the fishbowl

20 Nov, 2009

Kookoo for koko

Posted by andrea tomkins in: Oh! Things!|Ottawa|Recipes and Food

I have written about our family junk food “strategy” before. It’s not exactly written in stone, but to summarize:

  1. 1) We have minimal junk at home – no chips or pop or candy or chocolate or ice cream or bags of cookies are kept in the cupboards on a permanent basis.
  2. 2) I do the grocery shopping. If Mark does it, boxes of crackers and chocolate chip cookies suddenly materialize. ;)
  3. 3) If craving occurs, we feed it. The best scenario is to go out to feed it. This works best in the warmer weather (and so it doesn’t always happen), but we do like to walk or bike to the closest ice cream parlour and spend on the good stuff.

Ah, the good bad stuff. Much better than that BAD bad stuff.

I look at it this way: Homemade strawberry ice cream made with whipped cream and sugar? Eat it.

Delicious homemade cookie hot from the oven? Eat it.

Crappy factory-made shrink-wrapped danish from the 7-11 chock full of trans fats and ingredients you can’t pronounce? Don’t eat it.

Here is the thing about the buying quality instead of quantity. Less is more. And excellent ingredients go a long way to stem a craving. And the same goes for chocolate.

I had the pleasure of chatting with Lori Sword recently, owner and Chief Chocolatier of Koko Chocolates, for a recent SavvyMom article (which you can read here).

Lori is a lovely lovely person. Her dedication and patience (do you know how long it takes to make a tray of hand-dripped truffles?) is astounding. She works in a small room in her Parkdale-area condo, patiently filling orders for weddings and baby showers and Christmas gifts.

Lucky me, I got to sample the magic, but more importantly (yes, there is something more important than chocolate) I really enjoyed meeting someone who loves what they do. It is truly infectious.

And I haven’t even mentioned her delicious chocolates.

The good news about koko chocolates is that they taste like chocolate without being sugary sweet. And there’s no waxy filler like the kind you’d find in dollar store chocolates. (If you are buying and enjoying chocolate from the dollar store, well, I’m not sure if there is hope for you.) Bad news about koko chocolates is that you will never go back to your grocery-store variety ever again and you will look down your nose at dollar store chocolate and the people who eat them. :)

If you are a lover of chocolate you will love koko. Here’s the website if you want the deets.


2 Responses to "Kookoo for koko"

1 | lacoop

November 20th, 2009 at 7:46 pm

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psst…Mark…the trick here is to shop with your wife. I stick the goodies beneath bigger items (laundry soap, toilet paper, etc.) when nobody is watching, and then distract my wife at the cash, so that before you know it, the goodies are in the bag. :-)

2 | Melissa

November 25th, 2009 at 8:34 am

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I love koko chocolates — DH has purchased them a few times as a special surprise or pick-me-up (and, boy, do they ever! ;)).

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