Junk Food Nation, today in sports:

1)      Gary Carter died yesterday at age 57.  When I was a young kid learning about baseball, my dad taught me that Gary Carter was one of the good guys – played hard, fan friendly, and only played for two teams his entire career, having success with both. “The Kid” was one of my friend Dan’s favorite players as well, as he had an entire binder full of Gary Carter baseball cards.  It’s weird to see one of your childhood icons pass.  We’ll miss you, Kid.

2)      The Peyton Manning drama with the Colts and Jim Irsay is well documented and oft discussed on Sportscenter.  It doesn’t help that Jim Irsay has been taking to the Twitter-waves and being a loud jackass about the whole situation. One rumor has Peyton getting cut and signing with the Houston Texans. It’s a perfect situation – great RBs, great WRs, great O-line, and stout defense.  Hell, the Texans almost made it to the Superbowl THIS year with a third stringer.  If this happens, it’ll be interesting to see where Matt Schaub ends up – and whether Schaub will be cheaper to trade for than Robert Griffin III. (I’m looking at you, Redskins).

3)      Finally, it’s baffling to me that players on bad teams aren’t playing their asses off.  The equation is simple: if your team is bad, they are going to draft high, and they are going to get a player to replace you!  Wouldn’t you try your hardest to avoid this situation? With Anthony Davis, the shotblocking stud from Kentucky on the horizon, if you’re Boris Diaw, PF for the woeful Charlotte Bobcats, aren’t you freaking out? Wouldn’t you be trying to rebound and dunk your team out of the bottom seed, putting extra reps in, the works?  Instead of averaging 8.2 pts this season, like a waste of a roster space? I guess $9 million dollars is enough to buy complacency…

Today’s junk food: Mahogany Chocolate by Fredric Loraschi!

The Money Shot

I’m not usually one for fancy chocolate like this, but it was given to me by my friends Nevin and Indira and I was feeling regal today, so let’s dig in, shall we?

This snazzy package looks like a block of mahogany wood.  Sort of.  Needs a little more red.  But everyone knows when you want your shit to be fancy – encase it in a block of wood!

Fancy pants

Frederic Loraschi is a chocolatier who first started to bar and package his chocolate in 2005. Then he wrote his name in chocolate syrup and declared, “I SHALL SPELL IT WRONG AND THIS SHALL BE MY LOGO!”  Yum.

60% happiness

And these stencils are….coca beans? *shrug*

Let's head to flavor town

I didn’t expect such fancy chocolate to have the tag line, “Take your taste buds on a trip like never before!” Like, where, Disneyland?  Is that where I’m taking my tastebuds?

Surprisingly not a lot of sugar

I don’t know why, but cocoa nibs sounds dirty. Still, one has to appreciate the very limited amount of ingredients here.

Beauty chocolatized

WOW!  I was NOT expecting the candy bar to look like this.  I mean, it’s a thing of beauty.  A work of art.  I’m not sure if I’m supposed to eat it or frame it.

I literally just stared at the bar of chocolate for a good three minutes before I took this photo.  Choco-porn.

Backside

The back of this Mahogany Chocolate by Frederic Loraschi is pretty plain, though you can see the cocoa nibs and coffee bits sticking through.

Break me off a piece of that...

Look, I don’t know how a chocolatier does what he/she does, and I have no idea how he made this.  The speckling, the stripes, the different colors… mind boggling to me.  But I’m the same person who really doesn’t understand how cellphones work, either, so…

Bite marks

This Mahogany Chocolate by Frederic Loraschi was really really good.  Was it anything uniquely flavorful? To me, I’d have to say no – it was a very basic, good quality, milk chocolate, with not a lot of sugar.  Thus, the flavor was semi-muted – just a creamy, chocolate taste that wasn’t overly sweet.  The fact that the bar was light in color meant nothing in terms of flavor; this was not a brick of white chocolate.

The cocoa nibs and coffee bits were sparse, but added a nice TINY crunch here and there with an accent of bitterness.  Sweet, subtle, and quality – that’s what Frederic Loraschi gets ya.

I guarantee this is fanciest my junk food will ever get.  Phew.

Remarks? Hit me in the comments below or hit me on Twitter @junkfoodguy or on my Facebook Page.

Sincerely, Junk Food Guy