Nostalgic for Irreplaceable Chocolate

Since I wrote a more serious post earlier "today" I decided to write a lighter one before talking about other serious things, like the dissertation, which I want to finally "tackle" in my next post.

Some weeks ago I ate the last of the delicious Ghirardelli chocolate squares that my brother - and sister-in-law gave us in our stockings for Christmas (thanks, sis', I loved them!). The taste of this particular one brought a flood of memories to me since it reminded of my favorite chocolate ever. So here it is, finally, the "Lindt chocolate" post I alluded to a while ago at the end of this post. Enjoy!

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There are some "rare" pleasures in life and one of them is finding just the "perfect" chocolate. The one that becomes your absolute favorite, a treat that is the best possible sweet reward at certain challenging moments or stressful times. I'm hard to please and I don't eat chocolate or candy that often, so it took me a while to find mine.

I found it though, years ago (in 1998?) , in one of the most improbable places, the little candy/chips/soda store at the Student Union building's main floor, near the entrance, in my graduate institution.

The moment I tasted the Lindt chocolate bar with liquid strawberry filling, I knew I had found the most delicious chocolate ever. I bought it once in a while, trying not to indulge too often, lest I spoil the pleasure of a "rare" treat. You see, strawberries are my favorite fruit, and this liquid, clear filling, had the most perfect strawberry taste, sweet, and yet tangy, a bit sour. Just delicious.

I guess I bought four or five bars before this particular chocolate simply vanished. In the summer of 1999 I spent a month and a half studying French in a school in France, near the border with Switzerland (Geneva) [I was actually born in this particular place -- more here items 2-10] and I went to Genève nearly everyday and looked for this chocolate bar everywhere and had no luck whatsoever finding it. On my birthday my roommate gave me this as a present:[Odd Curiosity/ Coincidence: Of the 22 results in the "Lindt strawberry chocolate" Google Images search that I did to find this image 7 results were Brazilian sites selling Lindt chocolate!]

This bar, with a creamy strawberry filling was pretty good, but not the same, not even close to the "liquid filling" one. My dear friends in Brazil (the same who visited two weeks ago) were also thrilled to have found "my favorite chocolate" when they gave me this same bar as a present in 2004 or 2005. Of course I didn't say it wasn't "the one" because I didn't want to disappoint them.

When I came back to Massachusetts from France, I found my favorite chocolate once more at a chocolate store at the center of the town where my sons were born (hint: same town where Sylvia Plath went to college), but since I didn't go there very often, I think that must have been the last time I tasted it, late in 1999.

After that, I lost all interest in Lindt chocolates. There was a time back in 1999-2000 when my husband and I became quite addicted to Swiss chocolate, particulary Lindt, eating the little classic chocolate bars everyday after lunch or dinner. However, I stopped buying them after that, and never tried to look for my favorite chocolate again because I knew I wouldn't find it. Lindt still does have a raspberry liquid filling chocolate bar (like the Ghirardelli one), but even though raspberries are delicious, they are not my favorite fruit! Once in a while we buy the Lindt truffles, but I don't really care for them that much (I prefer Ferrero Rocher, for example).

Isn't it sad to know that I will probably never taste my favorite chocolate bar ever again? The funny thing is that its very absence makes it even more "legendary" and delicious because of the longing that I now have for it and the way I can only remember what it tasted like. I really wish I could have one as a reward after my dissertation defense though -- wouldn't that be great?