Back from France

Well, I know I haven't written any updates in a while. Part of the reason was that I was preparing for my trip to France, then I was in France, and now I'm back!

After completing the online Chocolatier's course last November, I decided to take the Master's Course arranged by the online school. The course took us to France, and down to a little village in the Rhone Valley near Lyon, called Tran Hermitage. This is the headquarters of one of the most pretigious chocolate manufacturers - Valrhona. If you google Valrhona you will learn that this chocolate company actually has fair trade arrangements with cocoa plantations, some of which are kept secret because they produce some of the best cocoa beans ever!

I landed in Paris, met up with my assigned roommate, Tessa from the UK and then with the other 9 students and our instructor, Pam. Students came from all over - Bejing, Canada, Switzerland, and of course the US. We took the train to Tran Hermitage, were treated to a wonderful dinner and then the next morning met with the chefs from Valrhona.

Here I must mention that Valrhona usually only offers chcoolatiering courses to chefs from France and other countries. We were the only group that was different.

We were met by two chefs, Chirstopher and David. David wore a red, white and blue collar on his chef's coat. We learned later that he had earned this special ecoration dbecause of the competition offered in France every three years for Pastry Chefs, Chocolatiers and Ice Cream Chefs. Sometimes no one wins this award if they don't meet up to the standards of the competition. David won his award for all three!

For the next three days, we were in teams making about 40 different recipes with chocolate. It was a demanding and challenging three days with David expecting perfection from us AND we achieved it!

After we finished at Valrhona, we were priviledged to visit another famous chocolatier's factory just outside of Paris - Patrick Roger. While this chef usually never allows anyone in to his factory, he met us and graciously gave us a tour of all his productions. Another awesome expxerience!!!

Now I am home, and working to market my chocolagte business. I have an exceptional product, with reasonable prices. I have also developed some "designer" chocolates like Cayenne pepper truffles which are very good, if you like spice with your chocolate. I am also working on developing wine flavored truffles as well as bacon flavored truffles!!!

Please think of me when needing gifts or just wanting some exceptional cocolates!