Northwest Chocolate Festival

Now here's a festival I can get behind: the (first annual) Northwest Chocolate Festival. On Saturday, September 13 we took MAX into downtown, then walked up to the Pearl. We didn't get moving until near noon, so we missed most of the workshops, but it was still fun (and worth $10?) to taste lots of fancy-schmancy chocolates, many of which brands are not available for retail sale, unfortunately. First, we sat in on part of a workshop on making chocolate confections (held at Whole Foods), then walked over to the Ecotrust building for some tasting. We slipped in to the second half of a lecture on the chocolate-making process, from bean to bar. It was hosted by people from Theo, a chocolate company in Seattle.

Wow, were these people chocolate snobs. It was awesome. They define as "mockolate" any chocolate that has additives. While I agree that Hershey's isn't the best of the bunch, I'm pretty sure that most chocolates you can find in stores would be considered "mockolate" under their rules. Very much against Dutch process as well. I think I'm more of an equal opportunity chocolate consumer. If it tastes good, I'll eat it. Which means that I really enjoyed the sample Theo bar I took home from this talk, but also like M&Ms when I go to the movies. :)

The Ecotrust building itself was pretty neat as well.

A doggie boutique down the street. You see lots of these in Portland, but this one is especially frou-frou.

We had a late lunch at Isabel. This is my avocado scramble, with jalapeno potatoes.