How to Buy Gourmet Chocolate for Valentines Gifts

Upgrade your traditional Valentine's chocolate gift. . . thanks to a high anti-oxidant content chocolate can improve our health and looks. Not all chocolate is created equal though. How do you know which is best for your sweetie? Read on!

Instructions

Difficulty: Easy

Things You’ll Need:

• Cash
• Internet access or a brick and mortar store
• A chocolate craving or a chocoholic Valentine
• Seasonal wrapping paper
• Health food store (optional)

1. Select a shop. Places that sell top quality chocolates include gourmet grocers, health food stores like Whole Foods and retailers like TJ Maxx, Homegoods and World Market. If you want to go the online route, search for organic or artisan chocolate or seek out the brands I mention below, they all have websites (feel free to contact me for website addresses).
2. Avoid this for the healthiest treat. Narrow your choices. So you've found a shop and are now faced with a display of heart shaped boxes screaming pick me! Stop. Avoid these assortments where the fillings, not chocolate, dominate, making them higher in fat and sugar content and diluting the antioxidant effects of the chocolate. Plus, they are more expensive. Walk away from the table and find the bars of chocolate. (You can still give that pretty heart, how to below.)
3. Organic Chocolates with lavendar and mint from Chokola'j with Dagoba Chocolate Choose the chocolate. Bars that say dark chocolate, 60% or higher (% cocoa content) are healthiest. Bear in mind the higher the % the more bitter the flavor. Consider the ingredients (if you are online site should have them listed):
   
   - The milk content, cocoa should be the first ingredient
   - Sugar, should be lower than 10g
   - Iron content - 4% or over indicates quality
   
   Many chocolatiers now add healthy ingredients to their chocolate like cinnamon, blueberries and chili so choose a variety. If you still are hankering to give filled chocolates, find organic brands like Dagoba that use only natural ingredients . . . but watch the sugar content. Some of my favorite chocolate brands are: Vosges, Bissinger's Spa Chocolate, Chocolat Noir, Choxie at Target, Dagoba and Valor.
4. Give it. Now, I promised I'd get back to the heart. Presenting a heart-shaped box is symbolic "Here's my heart". If you like, most card or discount shops like TJ Maxx carry empty heart shaped boxes. Pick one large enough for your chocolates. Fill the empty spaces with tissue paper, feathers, confetti (be creative) and give. For a modern twist, wrap each bar individually in festive paper and tie together with a ribbon. Let the romance begin! Happy Valentine's Day everybody!

Tips & Warnings

• Personalize your bars by adding messages to the outside of each bar using a Valentine's gift tag and/or giving a meaningful number of bars. For instance, seven bars of chocolate with A Week of Love written on the gift tag and each bar labeled Monday, Tuesday; The Top Ten Reasons I Love You ten bars with the aforementioned on each, etc.
• Turn your bars into a bouquet. Wrap the center of each bar with floral wire and insert into a flower arrangement.
• Chocolate may contain good for you ingredients, but it's not one of the five food groups! Chocolate should be part of a healthy lifestyle. As appealing as the "Chocolate Diet" sounds, it's fictional.