Can chocolate keep you awake?

I don’t know about you but it sure do keep me awake!

Unlike the general population who depended on coffee to keep their eyes cracked open, I don’t like coffee. Well, I don’t see the point of drinking a bitter brew just to keep awake. I remember trying to down a cup of coffee with loads of sugar and milk and still it tasted horrid to me. Before coffee lovers start throwing coffee beans at me, let me say in my defense that I have a very low ‘bitter threshold’. As in, I can’t take anything too bitter (well, except for bitter chocolate which I absolutely love but that is another story…). Anyway to cut a long story short, I don’t drink coffee in the mornings. Nor in the afternoons or evenings. I don’t drink coffee, period. The only time I bring myself to drink coffee is when it is a frappucino from Starbucks (even then, I prefer the chocolate one rather than the coffee ones).

So this brings me to the subject matter. Why do I say chocolate keeps me awake? Simple, it was tried and tested to be true…for me. Recently, I have a load of work which includes building up my chocolate website so I had to work real late into the night. In the first few weeks, I snacked on chocolate often (after everyone else has gone to bed…heh heh…) when I worked late till about 3am on a daily basis. I was not sleepy and raring to go all the time…well, except in the daytime when I am without my chocolate fix.

Then about a week ago, I decided to cut down. It is not helping my waistline to be consuming every single bar of chocolate in my fridge and cupboard. I was even gorging on my expensive imported gourmet chocolates which I was keeping to slowly savor in a chocolate tasting session. So, I stopped eating chocolates. Entirely. The end result, I was sleepy and falling asleep in front of my computer. I was nodding off by midnight and calling it a night by 1am. This is not good for my freelance work, not to say my cocoa-chocolate.com website which is still in the midst of construction.

So, last night I started snacking on chocolates again. Wonders of wonders, I stayed up till 4am without a single yawn!

 

Now, I know, scientifically, chocolate do contain caffeine but not as much as coffee. The amount of caffeine found in a 30g chocolate bar is about 6mg per ounce of chocolate. So, it is not really a substitute for coffee but hey, it worked for me and it is darn good too!

So, do please excuse me while I go stock up on my chocolate supplies…

Chocolate Fantasies

I have been in love with chocolate since I could remember so I often have this weird out fantasies about chocolate. No, there is nothing sexual about it if that is what you are thinking!

It is more like finding the most perfect chocolate ever created by mankind. Thus, I started a journey long time ago to taste every single chocolate I came across and this includes dark, milk, white and what-have-yous. As a real chocolate junkie, I do not really care what chocolate it is, whether it is the cheap, mass-produced, ultra-sweet waxy kind or the expensive, imported, branded and gourmet kind. As long as it is chocolate, I’ll try it.

So, over the years, I have gobbled, swallowed, licked, savored, tasted, chewed and munched on the likes of M&Ms, Hersheys, Mars and Snickers to the likes of handmade, custom-made one-of-a-kind chocolate truffles. Trust me, my waistline is enough to attest to all those years of binging on all variations of the creamy concoction. Fortunately, no diabetes to tell me to stop. (I have since taken up a healthier diet with ample exercise to keep my body healthy enough to binge some more on chocolates)

In my long years of journey in a chocolate-lined path, I found that I actually loved dark chocolate (or bitter chocolate) more than milk or white chocolate. Of course, I also hanker for the more expensive kinds too but hey, sometimes I just can’t afford it so I had to settle with the store-bought kinds (not that those aren’t good at all!)

Which gets me to the whole point of this brand new blog. I intend to write about my chocolate adventures and reviews here for the enjoyment of other chocoholics and to start off on the right foot, may I say again that I do not by any means look down at the generic chocolates out there. I eat all types of chocolate (even imitation chocolate!) and I will do my best to describe my experiences with this wonderful dessert or sweet snack or whateveryouwannacallit in full colorful detail here.

Towards our chocolate journey together! (*A toast with a chocolate milk shake in one hand and a bar of half-eaten Snickers on another*)