Maison Cailler Swiss Chocolates

Someone in the office left a bag of Cailler Swiss chocolates in the kitchen today. I took the liberty of sampling them. If Adam gets to go on assignment in Switzerland, I’ll be a very happy girl.

The lait (milk chocolate) was fantastic. Creamy and full of cocoa, this chocolate has a lighter taste than your typical Hershey’s bar. I wasn’t as big of a fan of the dessert or cremant chocolates. The dessert has traces of praline which i’m not a fan of, and the cremant was an ‘extrafine dark chocolate,’ and I’m not into that either. 

But unexpectedly, the blanc chocolate was my favorite. Super silky and supple, just like chocolate should be.  What’s your favorite international chocolatier?

Photo source 1. Source 2.

Read Full Post »

Peanut Butter

So over the last few days I’ve gotten into too many discussions about words we use back home. In a backpackers community, the first thing you talk about is food. Peanut butter is in fact as American as one could get, except maybe apple pie or Cheerios.

While its fun talking about the things that could be mixed into Champ or the contents of a Dutch breakfast, peanut butter is about the only thing I eat every day that reminds me of home. I now am a 3-cups-of-tea-a-day girl and even eat tomato sauce which tastes nothing like ketchup. All I want to eat for dinner is Hursey’s pulled pork bbq sandwich and a huge basket of hush puppies with a whole case of Bud Light (beer is ridiculously expensive here, like $12 minimum for a 6-pack).

So since my birthday is in about a month, here’s a list of things from home I miss that could potentially be shipped internationally:

Heinz ketchup

J. Crew anything

Kraft 3-Cheese Shells Mac N Cheese

Hursey’s BBQ sauce

Whatever new CDs have come out (anything country, John Mayer’s, etc. Music is like 4 months old here)

A flash drive with all the episodes of The Office, Greek and Gossip Girl I’ve missed

An Elon sweatshirt

An Alpha Chi baseball hat

And hugs. Can’t wait until Adam gets here and we head down to go skydiving!

Read Full Post »

Citrus & Mint: Free PINK Travel Bag!

The past month, Victoria’s  Secret was giving away a free travel bag full of goodies if you signed up for their PINK Nation online program. You had to buy something from the PINK line and have the coupon, which I did, so I figured I’d check out this sweet deal I found on www.Frugal-BonVivant.com.

I’m a big fan of the citrus and mint body wash. It wasn’t too overpowering, but smelled nice in the shower. The same-flavored lotion however was way too strong, and the scents did not go well together at all. The ‘refreshing spray’ is really just a body mist, but has a nice citrus scent, not  too bad. And the lip butter I absolutely love. I wish the tint would actually show up as color on my lips, but it’s a great little add-on to this package.

All in all, I’d say worth trying out if you managed to snag one before they stopped distributing them.

Read Full Post »

Chanel, Mademoiselle?

One frustrating thing about backpacking is the limited space for cosmetics.  Scent has always been an important part of my life, from baking chocolate spritz cookies to a gentle breeze across a bouquet of drying roses.  My current perfume list includes Romance by Ralph Lauren and Stella by Stella McCartney.  While it’s possible to buy small bottles, they tend to spill and your jeans have now become a parfumerie.

Last summer a sorority sister introduced me to the travel-friendly Stella fragrance complete in its compact, roll-on applicator shaped like a tube of lip gloss.

This would seem like a simple solution to a fragrant disaster.  I was disappointed to find even this sophisticated travel mate leaking when my purse tipped over.  Clearly Stella just can’t make the cut.

So on recommendation from a fellow intern, I’m working on collecting miniature sample-sized fragrances.  My first goal is a vial of Coco Mademoiselle

and hopefully I can score a few on my next trip to Pentagon  City, along with that bottle of Coney Island Cotton Candy OPI nail polish I’ve been craving for two months while refusing to pay the $8 price tag.  Maybe this time I’ll suck it up in favor of a few more sample sized products, and hopefully Sephora’s section of Beauty Mini’s holds a few other travel mates I can test, without breaking my bank.

Read Full Post »