hazelchaz | Everyday in the morning on her way to the office you can see her as she catches the train. (Reply)

Most of the little photos on Maria's home page have been restored. There are still a few missing -- we add another Maria snapshot every year -- but it's the first constructive result of the recovery process.

Trans-Atlantic Chocolate Exchange?

frostfox, you get first dibs -- I have a stack of big chocolate bars. One of them claims to be a Cadbury Dairy Milk bar, 127g. (I have the large 4.5 or 5.0 oz - 127 or 141 g - size of "Cadbury Dairy Milk", "Cadbury Caramello", Hershey's Milk Chocolate, Hershey's Special Dark, and one other I'll get to in just a moment.)

I'd like to send these to a Brit friend who will turn around and ship me an equivalent amount of local chocolate -- Cadbury, and if Nestle/Rountree is still manufactured in England some of those products. (We'll talk about that -- the flavored Kit Kat, esp. the mint and orange, were a big hit when I brought them into the office.)

Why?

For a taste test. I've had a real Cadbury Dairy Milk chocolate, and my suspicion is that the one I bought here -- the fine print on the back says "Mfd. by Hershey... under license from Cadbury Ltd." -- is not much different than a Hershey's Milk Chocolate bar in a different size and shape. So I'd ask that you buy a real Cadbury Dairy Milk, and do a taste comparison of the three milk chocolate bars and see what conclusions you come to; and, you send me your chocolate bars, and we'll do a taste test here as well.

It might be something to do at a dinner party -- we're talking about a pound and a half of chocolate here (right now it's 663 g, I might buy another one but I want to keep the shipment under 2 pounds which is almost 1 kg) so I'm not seriously suggesting one person eat the whole shipment. Or perhaps a small convention panel item.

Sue? Anyone else interested if Sue passes on it?

The other chocolate bar I mentioned is labeled "Cadbury Royal Dark." The coloring on the wrapper -- purple at the top, red at the bottom -- is reminiscent of Cadbury's packaging for their chocolate Turkish (Delight). I can't seriously imagine Cadbury UK labeling anything "Royal" without official permission; or does this product line exist over there? A renaming of the Bourneville dark chocolate bar, perhaps? It caught my eye, so I included it in the box along with the Hershey's Special Dark for a similar comparison.

We have two other big Cadbury bars on the shelves here -- the Fruit & Nut, and an Almond bar -- so maybe I should throw those & a Hershey's Almond bar. But that's getting to be a lot of chocolate to put in someone's unsuspecting lap...

Local note: Ralphs has them for a good price right now, which is partly what inspired me.

EDIT: Bought the other two "Cadbury" bars - the Roast Almond and the "Fruit & Nut" (Raisin & Almond) bars. So the chocolate is up to 917 g now.