Last Sunday afternoon, I decided to swear off sweets (with the exception of dark chocolate of 75% cacao content or higher) until Thanksgiving. Within 24 hours, I succumbed to a terrible cold. I'm convinced that they're related. My body is getting back at me for even considering such a denial. I think I just sneezed 40 times in a row. Thankfully, yesterday I ate two cookies and am starting to feel a bit better.

But that's not what I'm posting about right now. I've been trying to create 'the soundtrack of my life' in my head over the past several weeks. I haven't come up with a final track list yet. Either way, I'm not really posting about that either. What I'm really posting about is that:

1. I've been obsessing over the idea that chocolate should be paired not only with wine, beer, tea, and other liquids, but it should be paired with things that we experience outside the sense of taste. Like sound. I'm thinking music.
2. So after going to hear the Boston Symphony Orchestra with Dan last week, I'm 100% sure that I'm right, and that pairing chocolate with music could be a fascinating and powerful experience.

I'm kind of a dork about the fact that I really believe that fine chocolate can be experienced like a story. A narrative with ebbs and flows of intensity and depth. That brings me back to the soundtrack of my life. As I mentioned before, I have not come up with a final track list. But earlier today when I was imagining this week's ideal set, I started thinking that I should put together a music and chocolate pairing and post it here. But if I try to match up chocolate with music by myself, the results will be dominated by my personal music preferences. So then I was also thinking that I should have a listening party at my house to test my theories.

But first, I need to have a pre-listening party to determine which songs might pair with which chocolates. (There are always reasons to have more parties.) On one hand, it seems easier to start with a bunch of cool songs and then match up chocolates that will go with them, but doing that would downplay the importance of the chocolate in the whole deal. Here's what I'm going to do:

1. Choose 8 - 10 chocolates (either high quality truffles or fine pure chocolate - not sure yet)


2. Invite 8 - 10 friends over to taste the chocolates one by one (sans music)


3. Create some sort of chart or card where tasters can first indicate if there are particular genres of music that would pair well with the taste experience of each chocolate, and then have the option to specify particular artists, or even a particular song that might make for a good pairing.


4. Then I'll collect everyone's thoughts and put it all together and create Phase II of this experiment, which will be the actual listening party.

And finally, my hope is that I'll organize a public chocolate and music pairing someday soon. That would be sweet. I already have it all planned out in my head.

ps. The totally fascinating pic above is of truffles made by Cosmic Chocolate, which I took while I was at the San Francisco International Chocolate Salon a couple months ago. Speaking of chocomusic, their website is pretty jammin'. Jamiroquai has never sounded so delicious.