The Filipino Lifestyle Features Pinoychocophile

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Zy Gonzales is one of the co-founders and co-authors of blogsite The Filipino Lifestyle who I came across with in one the bloggers fora.  As mentioned in their website "The Filipino Lifestyle is a team of witty, young and talented online editors. We are here to provide entertainment, useful information and up-to-date topics about Filipino’s lifestyle be it about food, travel and leisure, fashion, and technology."

I was invited to be featured in their their lifestyle blog. Here is an excerpts of their entry about me, with some of my adds-on and links:

The openness of the internet has allowed a lot of people (including us) to air our thoughts and ideas for everyone to see. Social media sites like Facebook and Twitter and blogs have given small people the voice in the world of the internet.

In the vast number of small people with big voices, there are a few rare individuals whose voice are distinct and unique. When bloggers around the web stick to writing about gadgets, fashion, food, travel, photography and design, there are those who venture into a niche so unique that they become an authority in that particular field of interest. One good example of this kind of blogger is PEBA (Pinoy Expats/OFW Blog Awards) Luzon and Manila Coordinator – Pete Rahon.

Pete is one of only a handful of bloggers who have decided to express his love and enthusiasm for a particular topic – chocolates. According to Pete, his passion for chocolates has deep roots, which started from his childhood which was later renewed by social bookmarking site Pinterest.

Read more here - http://www.thefilipinolifestyle.com/2012/08/hobbyist-in-focus-pete-rahon.html


Maraming salamat Zy for featuring me in your blog!

Pinoy Chocophile

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I definitely like and love chocolates.

And I find this quote chocolicious:

There are four basic food groups: milk chocolate, dark chocolate, white chocolate, and chocolate truffles.

and more here - http://www.healthdiaries.com/eatthis/50-quotes-about-chocolate.html

"Chocolate is a divine, celestial drink, the sweat of the stars, the vital seed, divine nectar, the drink of the gods, panacea and universal medicine." - Geronimo Piperni, quoted by Antonio Lavedán, Spanish army surgeon,1796.


I just felt this itch to blog about chocolate. Lately I have been collecting/curating or pinning images of chocolates and even those products of Filipino cholatiers here are the links:

Pinoy Chocophile
http://pinterest.com/rahonpete/pinoy-chocophile/

Tsokolate
http://pinterest.com/rahonpete/tsokolate/

Bliss Luxury Choclates
http://pinterest.com/rahonpete/bliss-luxury-chocolates/

Machiavelli Chocolatier
http://pinterest.com/rahonpete/machiavelli-chocolatier/

Maitre Chocolatier
http://pinterest.com/rahonpete/maitre-chocolatier/

Risa Chocolates
http://pinterest.com/rahonpete/risa-chocolates/

Tablea Chocolate Cafe
http://pinterest.com/rahonpete/tablea-chocolate-cafe/

Marti Chocolatt
http://pinterest.com/rahonpete/marti-chocolatt/



So what this blog is all about?

A Filipino blog about his search for the divine chocolate. It will deal with  the  history, culture and tradition of chocolate in the Philippines.  It features  stories on chocolate, recipes, chocolatier, etc. Also, highlights anything and everything chocolate.



I came to know about this site - http://www.thechocolatelife.com they have some basic questions which I answered like this:


Most memorable chocolate experience:  sensual, orgasmic and bliss...

My favorite chocolate is:  I am still searching for that divine chocolate... I believe I will create it myself...

So, I am dreaming of becoming a chocolatier in the near future, yummy-licious....

So Mabuhay and welcome to this pinoy's chocophile blog...

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updated 7 April 2012

CHOCOPHILE
by The Chocolate Dictionary
http://thechocolatedictionary.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/chocophile/

Someone with a great love for, or an inordinate attraction to, chocolates. Chocophiles don’t just buy chocolates, they worship them at the altars of Theobroma; they don’t just unwrap chocolates, they undress them; they don’t just eat chocolates, they have passionate encounters with them; and they don’t just digest chocolates, they allow them to metamorphose irrevocably into poetry.

That chocolate is complex and mysterious is well known to chocophiles, and yet the substance is so simple it can be enjoyed plain. That is, if ever there is such thing as plain chocolate – its expressive potential is perhaps too great to fit into a simple classification. In categories that include the auditory, visual, olfactory, tactile, thermal, and gustatory, the sheer variety of sensory stimuli means that in terms of sophistication chocolate can easily be compared with fine wine.

Its soft textures can be smooth, silky, velvety or moussey, yet it can also be brittle, and the characteristic snap as it breaks on the fingers or teeth is one of the great pleasures of eating chocolate. It can be cooked and it can be frozen. It can be chewed, it can be drunk and it can be licked. It likes to be combined with other flavours, being noticeably more partial to some than others, yet it releases its own rainbow of impressions, memories and sensations as it melts slowly on the palate.

Chocolate can be made into desserts as well as main courses. It can be spread, piped, shaped, molded, sculpted, painted with, printed onto, and even worn as clothing. But most of all it enjoyed as confectionery. From highly sweetened milk chocolate, to filled bonbons such as truffles, ganaches, crèmes and pralines, to premier cru, single-estate, high cocoa content bars, the formulations in which chocolate confectionery are found seem limited only by the creativity of the makers.

Although chocolate is appreciated all over the world much of its profile is still mysterious and unknown. Indeed, it is said that chocolate is Mother Nature’s best kept secret. So numerous are its properties that despite decades of research food chemists are still unable to synthesize it. The appeal of chocolate crosses national, cultural and age barriers, yet its roots are deeply South American, where it has long been used in medicine and ritual. So versatile are the healing properties of chocolate that it is now used in therapy, recreation and massage.

For many consumers, chocolate is such stuff as dreams are made of. It is such stuff as ecstasy and perfection. It is a Holy Grail. It is a weaver of fantasies. The more one gets to know chocolate the more one realises it has its own character and personality: it talks and it listens; it comforts and it calms; it lifts spirits and it boosts energy levels; it brings joy and it stimulates desire.

That chocolate is so open to interpretation is a quality fully exploited by manufacturers and advertisers, especially in their adoption of the so-called Milk Tray Approach. Some say chocolate is feminine: that it is an Aphrodite, a Cleopatra, a Juliet or a Josephine Baker. Others say that it is masculine: that it is a Mark Antony, a Romeo, a Casanova or a Byron. Chocolate is neither and yet it is both. Because of its versatile, contradictory nature we think of it as human, and some are even apt to fall in love with it, but as the botanical name for the cocoa tree means “food of the gods”, perhaps it is divine.

Robert Linxe, founder of La Maison du Chocolat and “magician of the ganache” recognizes this perhaps more than anyone. He has defined over two hundred sensory impressions one can derive from chocolate, yet admits the real total is probably much more. For Linxe, chocolate is more than just confectionery it is a complete sensory entity. Professor Chantal Favre-Bismut, a Nutritionist at the University of Paris, went further, describing chocolate as “one of the most delicious and noble factors of our whole existence”. Few, if any, chocophiles would disagree.

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