February 5th, 2010: Chocolate
So, you all know I love chocolate. Right? Well, if you didn't, you do now. When I was in Denmark last, I came home with 5kgs of chocolate. This was two big bags of Callebaut chocolate from which I am going to try making some fancy chocolates that my friend, Christina, has been teaching me to make. My target was to make some chocolates before Valentine's Day.

Yesterday I got an email from Christina which read:
Now there are only a few days until Valentine's day – have you made some chocolates for Kelvin? (or have you only reached the point where you open the chocolate bag and eat the chocolate?)

GUILTY, as charged! No chocolates made yet. I have still to purchase a thermometer - a must have when making chocolate. My chocolate moulds are ready and recipe at hand. Still not sure how to get Baileys into the middle but I'm working on that. One problem is, the Baileys is consumed well before there are any thoughts of getting it inside a chocolate.

This week Akihiro arrived from Japan. Akihiro is a sheepdog handler and total enthusiast for everything related to sheepdogs. He is staying with us for the month of February and in this time we'll be visiting various handlers so he can watch them train and handle their dogs.

Akihiro came armed with CHOCOLATE from Japan. And it is SUPER! (and all gone, I might add).

The two boxes of chocolate below donate a portion of the sale to Children's charities. 'One piece of chocolate for one smile' - imagine if every box of chocolates I consumed made the same charitable donation. Well, I'd quite literally keep a heck of a lot of kids smiling.

Akihiro also gave Kelvin and I each an Omamori. These are for good luck and dreams coming true. Let's hope they work!

Of course, we didn't have much luck when our heating oil ran out yesterday and we had to resort to the wood burning fireplace for heat. Well, at least we were not cold....only wet. It has been raining hard all week. We have been out training most days although the fields are soggy. The mud is knee deep around the gates.

Not much else to report for this week.

Matane