Previously on As The Palace Turns.. A new chocolate heaven was discovered, did the love last or was devastation around the corner??

*Update* A week of trying the samples of everything we purchased at Soma’s last week has resulted in the following findings:
**Malted Milk Hot Chocolate Mix: Ken tried this and said it was ok but he’s not big on hot chocolate
**Mayan Hot Chocolate Mix: The instructions said to use 1/2 cup of water with 1 packet (almost a cup) of mix. This seemed way too thick to me so I added another 1/2 cup of water and it was good. I made the second packet for Andrea on Monday and used 1 1/2 cup water and it seemed the same consistency as the cup we purchased at the store. Though theirs was steamed milk not water. Still.. OH my lord is it good..
**Gianduja Hot Chocolate Mix: I tried this on Sunday, it smelled delicious but it was too nutty tasting for me. I think Ken would <3 it though.
**Almond Clusters with Milk Chocolate and Handmade Toffee & Baci D’Allassio (Chocolate Hazelnut Kisses) sandwiched with Dark Venezuelan Chocolate & Roasted Cashews tumbled in Chai spiced Milk Chocolate: Ken, Michelle and Andrea all raved about these. I don’t like nuts though.
**“Arbequina” estate olive oil dark Venezuelan truffle cones: Not bad, a strange shape though. Yummy.
**Beurre noisette & Valentine Holiday candies & salted chocolate caramel: All very good, I’ve never tasted salt with chocolate before. Surprising.
**chocolate caramel crisp: Hands down winner of the taste test. It makes you want to take the smallest bites possible so you can savor it longer.

So on to our main events.. what have I been doing this week?

February 7th - 9th (Thursday to Saturday)
Went and picked up Michelle for a visit. Good amount of snow on the ground so driving was interesting. We played a lot of Rock Band, had yummy food and of course discovered the distillery district on Saturday. Driving her home Saturday night was pretty bad, the roads were snowy still and it started to snow again when we reached Kitchener. We actually got stuck in the unplowed side street where her friend lived when we picked up her dog Daisy. FUN!

On the way home, I called Erika to see what she and the gang were up to and asked them over for some visiting. They agreed and we played more Rock Band had some of the yummy bread from the Bakery and had a cop come to the door at 9:30 (on a Saturday?!?) about the noise. We promised to turn it down but the sad part was that we already had it turned down from it’s normal volume of 55 to 40. So we turned it down to 35 and put a blanket underneath Ken’s drums. I really hate living in these apartments. This is not the first time we’ve had notices left on our door or hallway about the volume. The walls are thick but the front door is not so all the sound goes through there. Even at lower volumes you can still hear it in the hallway. It also really pisses me off that the notices always say something about “respecting those of us who work all day and need our sleep” .. Ken often has late night upgrades, when they have to pull the servers off-line, doing so when there’s the least amount of traffic is best. Yet the building has been doing construction on the new old folks home beginning as early as 7am. Where’s his respect? I’m positive he’s not the only one in the building who works nights. I often wait till after midnight to do laundry so that I don’t have to worry if there will be available washers, and occasionally even at 3am it’s been busy.

February 10th - 13th (Sunday to Wednesday)
We didn’t really do much of anything. Andrea came on Monday as usual but Chris was scheduled to come on Tuesday this week instead. He didn’t end up coming because we got an insane amount of snow again and didn’t want to risk anything. Wednesday, Michelle came by for 2 hours after her doctor’s appointments but she was feeling tired so we just chatted for a bit.

Both Ken and I played a lot of EQ2. They put in the Erollisi Day holiday events and while 2 of them were the same as last year, there was a new one and a bunch of new items to craft such as silver or gold plated roses, incense burners, perfume bottles, chaise lounge chairs and marrsipan candies and frosted cookies and much more. They’ve been selling well in the market too, so I might be able to afford a horsie someday! Of course I had to put one of everything in my own house. :p

February 14th (Thursday)
Valentine’s Day! Not really a big holiday for me, but it’s a nice idea. I really wanted some Mayan Hot Chocolate so we went down to Distillery District and picked up some sandwiches, then went to Soma’s. It was not-surprisingly packed! Of the stuff we got last time we picked up, A big bag of the Mayan Hot Chocolate Mix, another small bag of the Almond Clusters with Milk Chocolate and Handmade Toffee, a packet of the Gianduja Hot Chocolate Mix for Ken to try, 6 of the legendary chocolate caramel crisps, 4 Beurre noisettes, 4 salted chocolate caramel and 2 of the candied Seville orange peel, hand-dipped in dark Venezuelan chocolate but somehow they didn’t make it to the bag. :/ Sorry Ken! I also had another small cup of the Mayan Hot Chocolate made with steamed milk.

Some new things we picked up are:
**1 small package of Lightly Salted Roasted Sunflower Seeds tumbled in Milk Chocolate
**2 packets of A La Taza Hot Chocolate Mix (The classic thick hot chocolate of Barcelona, gently spiced with Vanilla, Cinnamon and Allspice). I want to try it and then maybe I’ll send some packets to my Grandma and Great-Aunt who are from Spain.
**1 small square of Sugar-Free 53.8% chocolate. (Low carb and suitable for diabetics, sugar is replaced with Maltitol)

With chocolate glowing hearts we set off to run a few errands, we’d been slacking hard and needed a trip to Costco. Apparently everyone else in the city needed to go somewhere at the exact same time and we had a really bad time with traffic, but I got to see a really nice area on the Lakeshore that I hadn’t seen before and a SNOWY beach! We picked up way too much stuff at Costco.. but somehow it really didn’t look like that much. Our most extravagent purchase was a new 11 piece knife set. We never did find the paring knife from our old set.. how the heck can you lose a knife in a tiny apartment without “finding” it accidentally in your foot or something?

I have to mention that while we were at Costco, every other guy I saw had either a giant box of chocolates or a huge orchid plant.. or both.. way to go slackers!

Next Week / Future
Ken, Chris, Nick and Myles have lots of work to do this weekend and the following week finishing up moving all the servers to the new suite. I think we’re all going down to 151 this Saturday night. Monday is a new holiday, Family Day, just about the worst name I’ve ever heard for a holiday and for no reason other than to have a holiday in February. Ken says that he will be “unavailable” for work except for world ending situations, I wonder what he’ll do instead :p

Next week is also my Grandfather’s birthday (Thursday), Ken’s Uncle Lynn’s birthday (Saturday) and an old friend Pheuri’s birthday (also on Saturday). So HAPPY! BIRTHDAY!! <3