Hey, I'm back! Not that I really planned on going anywhere, but I had a nice little week of vacation during which I didn't do a whole lot of anything. Mostly I did some spring cleaning type stuff, got caught up on a TV series I missed out on when it ran, searched high and low for a specific size and style of cooling rack, and vegetated. It was a pretty quiet week and most of my chocolate consumption was in the form of pastries again (hit The Hills a lot).

There was a bit of interesting chocolate in there, though. I went to Philadelphia for a day and stopped into the Reading Terminal Market for lunch. It reminds me a lot of our North Market here in Columbus, only bigger and featuring lots of Pennsylvania Dutch cooking (oh so good). And it just happens to be home to an institution in the world of sweet stuff: Bassetts Ice Cream. They've been at it since 1861 and seem to know what they're doing. They're another one of those places that I first ran into on either Food Network or the Travel Channel (I have a habit of watching any show having to do with bbq, ice cream, and of course chocolate). And they seem to be worthy of the hype. Very good stuff in my opinion. I had a couple of scoops of Raspberry Truffle which was quite lovely.

Another place of interest in the RTM is Chocolate By Mueller. In addition to being known for good chocolate they have a couple of items that they offer that are a bit... interesting. The first is the anatomically correct chocolate heart. They have a lot of molds - some quite unusual - and one of the most interesting is the heart. The other item that really turned my head was the chocolate covered onion. Not a terribly appetizing combination, but it does make for a neat gag gift. I tend to be pretty open minded about combining things with my chocolate, but I think I draw the line at onions. I just ain't right. Nope. But it certainly does capture the imagination and makes people talk.

So, while it wasn't a chocolate vacation like New York was (and will be again) there was some tasty chocolate happening along the way. And now that I'm done with the whole organized laziness I can get back to the normal laziness. I have a couple of items on deck including the promised thoughts on pairing beer and chocolate and I should be getting to them this week.