I need chocolate to breathe.

Let’s face it - who doesn’t? Some people claim not to like chocolate very much, but in small doses, they’re hooked. So let us all indulge, be humble subjects of the Chocolate Gods.

Got up early this Sunday morning determined to do a big shop for food. One, I’m stocking up for the easter break. Two, I needed a couple of special things for the meals to come (indeed, look forward to some of the challenges I’ll be setting myself up with!). Three, sometimes you just need a trolley and supermarket aisles to sort you out you know? My shopping list was a right monster - and thankfully I did stick to it. Hans was with me as well so her presence definitely kept me in check. Or I would have spent the whole day just loading up the trolley. The only deviation from my shopping list was, you got that right, a slab of Divine Chocolate. **it comes in dark chocolate, dark chocolate with fruit and nut, mint dark chocolate, milk chocolate, white chocolate, orange milk chocolate, coffee milk chocolate & hazelnut milk chocolate which you can get from selected stockists or online from their website.

I like all kinds of chocolate. And knowing me, you’d think I would be a snob about it. Sure, I do highly regard good brands of chocolate like Godiva, Max Brenner and Prestat. Sometimes though, it’s good to remember that everything always starts out small and simple. Divine Chocolate is an amazingly smooth and creamy chocolate whichever flavour you get. It’s hard to put my finger on what makes it so good (other than the fact that it’s packaged in one swankily designed paper-foil wrap), but one thing that certainly makes it different is the fact that it’s Fairtrade. Many people have the misconception that Fairtrade is not as good as the non-Fairtrade. That might be true for some products, undoubtedly. But it’s all about finding the right Fairtrade brand and being loyal to it to help other Fairtrade labels get up to standard.

The Fairtrade Foundation is a non-profit organisation, aiming really to help set up fair trading structures for the poor and disadvantaged, ensuring that honest trades occur between retailer and producer. I think what they are doing is amazing and if anyone is interested in finding out more : click here for Fairtrade. Current products I’m using that are Fairtrade: sugar, chocolate and tea. Am hoping to look out for more good products that are Fairtrade and make a shift to support the cause. For now, it’ll be hard to miss me with a Divine chocolate bar whether I’m on campus between lectures or on a cross-country train.

The advent of the Chocolate Season has also pushed us to this - Easter Nests. The ultimate, easy-to-make sweet treats!! Of course, I say easy-to-make but you should have seen how we ‘culinary experts’ Hans and I found ourselves creating more mess than we had expected to. Hans initially pounded all our Shreddies to powder and I curdled some of our dark chocolate by adding cold milk to the warm melted chocolate. ‘Twas godawful! I do believe these ridiculous mistakes were only made due to the immense excitement that had overpowered us completely. It all turned out well. Break up your shreddies. Melt some dark and milk chocolate. A little butter or milk if you think that’s what it needs. Mix the broken Shreddies into the chocolate. Form into nests, make sure you leave a little hole in the middle. Then Mini Eggs on top! Slide it into the fridge for it to set…this takes like 2-5min then back out again. We took ‘em out real quick and polished them off even quicker.

Easy peasy. Only thing left is for someone to present me with a Divine Chocolate Easter Egg. Anyone???