Tyler Cowen at Marginal Revolution asks, what is the proper pairing with dark chocolate? He offers the following schools of thought:
1. Wine
2. Spirits
3. Strawberries
4. A pinch of red chili powder
5. A quick swig of mineral water immediately afterwards
I can get behind any of these except perhaps the mineral water (I have never heard of this school of thought and suspect it exists primarily in Cowen’s mind, not that that’s a strike against it); I am all about potentiating the chocolate effect, not washing it out. With wine I like big reds; port is frequently recommended with chocolate but I don’t find it to be a great combination, and whites seem to be either too acidic or too sweet.
Strawberries are good; raspberries are better.
It was near the end of the comment thread before anybody suggested stout; Guinness and chocolate is one of the great flavor combinations as far as I’m concerned.
Many people suggest oranges; my favorite truffle flavoring is orange, but I am not so sure about actually eating chocolate and eating oranges/drinking orange juice at the same time. I prefer having the orange essence infused into the chocolate rather than as a separate entity.
I can’t leave out my lowbrow favorite: plain potato chips. Salt plus chocolate, yum. I don’t waste very good chocolate on this combination, though.
I’m spending a lot of time in the hospital now that my clinical rotations have started, which is leaving less time and energy for other things like blogging, and I decided to simplify my life by just not doing anything that I’m not finding necessary or fun, hence the paucity of posts. I am very much liking the rotations though. The first month I was on outpatient medicine, which is supposed to be kind of a vacation but actually turned out to be half inpatient medicine and quite the challenge, but I loved the work. For the past five weeks I’ve been on inpatient medicine, first general internal medicine and now cardiology. I really like this too; taking care of patients is interesting and fulfilling. So that’s good.
Other good stuff (some a bit belated since my internet surfing has been curtailed):
Why blogs should provide full-text RSS feeds: it’s good for business. You’re not going to keep people from using RSS readers (especially the high-volume readers who, really, are who you most want reading your blog), and providing partial text is more likely to just make them stop reading than click over every day. There are some great blogs that I used to read before I made the RSS switch, but their crappy feed quality means I haven’t really kept up - there is so much else out there. And there’s more than one blog where I’m not interested in all the posts, but I am interested in many of discussions in the comments, so I usually do click over if there are interesting posts, even once I’ve already read the whole text.
The Pantsuit Paradox: “How do women signal power at the boys’ club?” It’s an excellent article about a real dilemma: women have no equivalent of the suit and tie, an outfit that projects professionalism and authority and nothing else. We have to worry about whether we look too girly or not feminine enough, too sexy or too matronly, too trendy or too stodgy-librarian. (I do think there’s an excellent role for the businesslike pantsuit well-cut for the female shape; I am not sure why female politicians don’t seem to use them more, but then the viewpoint that for women, dressing up = skirt is still definitely out there.) Luckily a white coat and stethoscope go a long way toward projecting professionalism and authority, so I don’t have to worry too much about this anymore. Although I did see in one of the dress codes that women are supposed to wear T-shirts under scrubs; no word about men. I guess risking a hint of cleavage is much more unprofessional than letting all your chest hair hang out.