This past Saturday, me and Dan met up with my friend Jeff and one of his friends at a Fluff festival, and then bumped into our friends Eric and Angie, who bumped into a friend of theirs, and then Jeff and his friend saw two of their friends, and we all ended up at the bar next door eating gourmet Fluffer Nutters (which I'll probably post about later).

Coincidentally, Jeff also brought me some chocolates that he got in Australia made by a company called Haighs.

So there I was in a bar with a pretty random group of people with a box of chocolates in my bag. Dan suggested that we open it up and try some. It was kind of sad though, because we came up with that great idea right after my friend Jeff left - my friend Jeff who actually gave me the chocolates. So he didn't get to have any, but a bunch of his friends did. We hung out in the back corner of the bar and tried 4 or 5 odd-tasting filled bon bon-type Australian chocolates.

The chocolates featured 3 native Australian flavors: Quandong, a desert fruit that was present as a dried fruit paste in one of the chocolates. It was sweet, kind of like a combination of dates and dried apricot. The wattle seed chocolate was sticky, kind of like toffee with a little bit of nuttiness maybe. It had a "w" on it for "wattle" (see pic above). And another chocolate we tried was called "Lemon Myrtle." Lemon myrtle is a bushy rainforest tree that produces flowers that have a lemon limey flavor. And the Lemon Myrtle chocolate tasted just like that - lemony, limey, and floral. And super sweet. All of the chocolates were sweet and chewy-sticky. Curious, but not quite my style. What was good was the company. It was fun to pass the box around and have people taste the different chocolates and talk about them.

When I go out, I meet a lot of people who want to talk to me about chocolate and who want to be invited to my next chocolate party (that I have at my house every so often.) From my own experience, chocolate is a pretty sweet way to connect with people. That's one of my favorite things about it. This post on my friend Toby's blog inspired me to not only talk to strangers, but to invite them to taste some chocolate and then see how many new friends I can make that way. Coincidentally, I also met Toby in a bar. Though I did not have any chocolate with me at the time.

Here are a three points about why you should have a mini chocolate tasting in a bar with strangers. Note that these are all based on my personal experiences:

• You might get bored and need a conversation starter.


• Someone might give you a really big box of chocolates that you don't really want to eat all by yourself.


• Chocolate makes many people really happy.