Criminal Chocolate

Adam and I had a brief chat this morning. Our discussion was fairly ordinary. We discussed packing for his conference in Cairns. "The City of Cairns is the premier regional city in Australia, and the world's safest tropical city. It is located about 1700km from Brisbane and about 2500km from Sydney by road." Adam will be leaving tomorrow morning, for a five day conference up north. Amazingly one of the conference days is a touring day and the participants are scheduled to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Can someone please sign me up for that conference? (More will follow on the Reef in another posting, and hopefully Adam will send plenty of pictures I can share.)


What you may ask does all this have to do with the topic of today's posting? I am getting there... patience please. Our next topic of conversation was food. See we're getting closer now. Adam is no Bobby Flay, in fact I am always rather shocked when Adam tells me he has been preparing food. Nevertheless the boy has to eat and I know he has gone grocery shopping at least twice. I have therefore assumed that Adam was cooking something.


To tie this morning's conversation and the topic of this posting I must also state that Adam has told me fears acquiring a bathsuit for his journey to the reef because he thinks he's gotten fat (I'm probably going to an earful for sharing all of this but I can't help myself). Why I asked, figuring he's been eating fairly plain simple foods, of the sort I've seen him 'cook' (I use that term loosely). The answer I received was... "the chocolate here is criminal". Apparently Adam's main food group in Australia is chocolate. Hence the connection between Cairns and food.


I can't say that I blame him though. When compared to available chocolate confections in the USA, Australian chocolate would be fantastic. Afterall a good deal of it is produced by Cadbury and Cadbury is amazing! Who doesn't love Mini-Heroes (my favorite - note I have it shlepped in for me by people traveling to the UK)? Apparently there are similar treats in Australia. Though they have other items as well, such as, Koala Carmellos and Cherry Ripe. All tasty I'm sure.


I was rather relieve to hear that Adam is not living on chocolate alone. His other new Australian food of choice is the meat pie. "The Aussie meat pie is another famous icon together with having a beer while indulging in watching the footy (Aussie Rules Football). Australians are reputed to be the world’s largest consumer of meat pies per capita, with each person on average consuming over 12 meat pies and a further 17 combined pastries, sausage rolls, and party pies per annum."


Meat pies and cholocate... well at least more than one food group is being represented.