Sometimes I forget how lucky I am. I get bogged down by the day-to-day, and forget. Forget that some people never get a chance to live their dreams.

Thanks to my friend Melissa from Home on Deranged, who shares my same cuckooness and weirdo sense of humor, I got to be part of an amazing anthology of writers with whom I am honored to share the same ink. The Mother of All Meltdowns

And then, even more lucky, because as part of that amazing group, I also got a package of chocolate bars in the mail from Chuao Chocolatiers that I got to eat share, with the purpose of completely satisfying my chocolate desires reviewing.

But because I can’t do anything the normal way, I decided to mix things up a bit. If I were reviewing this chocolate I would have said YUM! So I thought I’d bring it to the masses, okay my family and friends. (I don’t know any masses.) They were of course thrilled to get to eat so much tiny pieces of chocolate! (well I had to have enough to go around!)

Because I know you don’t get enough of Isaiah, he got to be the first reviewer and we decided what better way to get the experience than a Vlog!
(If you don’t know who he is – basically anything funny I write is about him. Finally, I had to give him his own blog, check out the sidebar.)
If you have a short attention span feel free to fast forward to 2:15ish…

Incase you have no attention span, the Final Verdict on the video was Sweet and Salty. HOWEVER by the next day he was Maple Bacon all the way!

 

Then I asked Cindy, one of my favorite people, to help me out. And I’m not just saying she’s my favorite because she has the most awesome cookie business called Cookie Karma and will probably make me some Oreo Stuffed Cookies for saying nice things about her.

She is one of my favorite people because she’s been with me through thick and thin, okay well, she sits with me through Isaiah and her son’s Archery Class and understands Isaiah and appreciates his quirks, and that takes a special person, so it’s basically the same thing. Also she makes cookies, duh! She’s the perfect person to get an opinion from! I’m just gonna get right to it!

Pretzel Toffee Twirl: Not impressed, there’s not enough pretzel in each bite. It has these full pretzels just pushed in, so if you don’t get a bite of the pretzel you don’t get any pretzel at all.

Maple Bacon: Yuck, just yuck.
(her son loved it)

Sweet and Salty: Yummy. Tastes just like a really good milk chocolate, not just any plain milk chocolate. It’s nice and smooth.

Ravishing Rocky Road: Ooooh, anything with marshmallow basically wins with me. I love this, this is definitely my favorite.

Final Thoughts: Their milk chocolate is really amazing. They should use that more. I am not a fan of dark chocolate, so the Pretzel Toffee didn’t stand a chance.

 

Danielle is my sister. (Don’t tell her I used this picture, she’d kill me) She is the Chocoholic of the family. Basically if it’s sweet but not chocolate, she won’t eat it, so don’t bother. My son is even a dissenter, whenever I have something yummy and chocolate he steals it from me and gives it to my sister because he claims “she need’s it more than I do.” I cry foul. He’s clearly brainwashed.

Pretzel Toffee Twirl: Yum! I love dark chocolate and this has a really nice texture and consistency. It’s a little sweeter than regular Dark Chocolate and I like that. It is Very Delicious and I could eat this whole bar easily. (tough luck)

Maple Bacon: This tastes like a bad trick! Like there’s a campfire in my mouth and I can’t get rid of it! It’s just bad and it doesn’t taste anything like bacon!

Sweet and Salty: This tastes crunchy, like the salt is actually crunchy. But the milk chocolate is nice and smooth, I like it.

Ravishing Rocky Road: Well it smells really good! Nice texture, not too sweet, it’s like a mellow road… The Chocolate is not quite as nice as the smooth milk chocolate in the Sweet and Salty.

Final Thoughts: Pretzel Toffee wins by a mile, but I wouldn’t turn away a bar of the Sweet and Salty either!

 

Katie and Karlie – These awesome ladies own my favorite pizza place in town. The same pizza place I’ve gone to my whole life – because I’m that chick who said she couldn’t wait to get out of this small town, only to move back once I realized there’s no place like home. Of course, they weren’t even born when I first ate their yummy pizza; lucky for them they stuck to the family business – because if they didn’t they never would have met me Isaiah! They have known Isaiah since he was a freaking maniacal lunatic who did laps around their restaurant like it was the Indy 500. Now he sits in his seat nicely and eats his dinner before he decides to tackle his sister cousin in the aisle and start WW3.

Because they’re twins, duh, I thought it would be good to get both of their opinions. Although, don’t let looks fool ya, they may look the same on the outside but on the inside they are 100% unique.

Pretzel Toffee Twirl: 
Karlie: It’s crunchy, but not real pretzley. I don’t love the dark chocolate and there isn’t enough pretzel.
Katie: All I taste is the pretzel. I don’t really like dark chocolate, but I like this!

Maple Bacon:
Karlie: This should not happen, it’s just wrong. It doesn’t even taste like bacon, it tastes weird, like smoke.
Katie: It’s vile, just vile.

Sweet and Salty:
Karlie: This is delicious, I love the salt.
Katie: Mostly I taste the milk chocolate, which is really good. I tasted the salt at the end. This one is good.

Ravishing Rocky Road:
Karlie: This is fabulous! It needs ice cream. Really. I would totally eat this with ice cream.
Katie: This is the best one I’ve had. Not too much chocolate, marshmallow or nuts. It’s just the perfect combination.

Final Thoughts:
Karlie: Even though I really liked the Rocky Road, my favorite was still the Sweet and Salty.
Katie: The Rocky Road was my favorite, but I would eat any of them again except the bacon!

 

So, how did Chuao Chocolate fair in the end?

All in all, everyone loved something. Most people didn’t love dark chocolate but felt the quality of the milk chocolate was superior to anything else they had tasted.
However, if you like Dark Chocolate, Pretzel Toffee Twirl is for you. And the quality of their Dark Chocolate was also highly praised by my sister chocolate expert.
If you are a fan of milk chocolate it seems like it’s a toss-up between Sweet and Salty and Ravishing Rocky Road. Basically they are both awesome.
Bacon? Well every adult who tried it thought it was vile. Every kid who tried it (Isaiah, my niece and Cindy’s son) loved it. Go figure.

 

Now what’s in it for you? An amazing giveaway over at the site created just for us women, a place where no one judges, you’ve got a shoulder if you need it, and mostly we can all laugh about the unbelievable things that happen every day. Click on over to No Mother is Perfect, you can’t imagine what you can win! Even a three-night stay at The Oaks at Ojai!

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The Mother of All Meltdowns