While browsing del.icio.us the other day I came across a link to WikiHow page on tasting dark chocolate. There are 11 suggested steps to getting the most out of your chocolate tasting experience. The first encourages you to "mute all kinds of background noise, such as television, music, a crying baby, etc." (Will someone please mute the baby?) After that comes palate cleansing and several tips for taking in the aroma, visual appearance and texture of the chocolate. There is also a list of suggested brands, in case you want to do some side-by-side comparisons.

Whole Foods is rolling out new ads to emphasize the low priced items they say they've been selling all along, according to an article in the New York Times. Apparently "whole paycheck" has just been hiding their competitively priced light under a bushel. Prices of certain items will now figure prominently in the new ads. According to the NYT article, Business Day ran some price comparisons between Whole Foods, Trader Joe's, a Manhattan Walgreen's and Food Emporium. Kashi cereal and Philadelphia Cream Cheese were both cheaper at Whole Foods. I've done a few informal price comparisons between my local Whole Foods and Publix supermarket and also found that prices on items like Nature's Path cereals (my beloved Optimum Power Breakfast) and Blue Diamond almond milk are generally cheaper at Whole Foods. The ads will run in New York City for the next 10 weeks.

[Image: NYT]

Dr. Brown's makes the best cream soda in the world, as far as I'm concerned. Ok - that's an overstatement, since I haven't had every cream soda there is, but they do make an outstanding soda. It is creamy, with a strong vanilla flavor and just the right amount of carbonation. I don't buy it often, but I'll always order it when I see it on the menu at a restaurant or deli. I recently picked up a bottle of Diet Dr. Brown's cream soda, for comparison with the original. Sure, I will admit that it had a faint taste of artificial sweetener in with the deliciously smooth vanilla, but it was close. Very close. I'll save the regular Dr. Brown's for when I eat out and keep a pack of the diet at home.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]

I'm already thinking about this month's Sugar High Friday: Low Sugar Edition. I like the challenge of coming up with recipes to fit a theme. But low sugar? I'll cut back on fat in a heartbeat, but I have to say that I would be hard pressed to give up sugar for any length of time unless I absolutely had to. Of course, one dessert does not a commitment make. Nevertheless, I wanted to know what I was up against, so I devised a little taste test with some fresh lemonade.

Let me first say that this was not scientific at all. It was not a blind taste test; I simply made two batches of lemonade and sweetened one with Splenda brand sweetener and one with sugar. Both batches tasted very good. The one with regular sugar tasted a little more complex, with the sugar having an obvious presence. The Splenda sweetened lemonade tasted a little brighter and more tart - it was difficult to measure how much I wanted to add from those little packets - but not artificial at all. The sugar version might have tasted a little bit more homemade, but the Splenda batch was very good, as well.

As far as ability to sweeten lemonade, I declared the test between Splenda and sugar a tie. Then I enjoyed the rest of my experiment with a bowl of chips on the side.

[Photo by Nicole Weston]