The Sandpoint Eater Cocoa loco

tor who kept me in top-shelf samples of high-end chocolate for months.

Who doesn’t love chocolate? As a devoted consumer, connoisseur, baker and candy maker, I’ve always been a fan. Few pleasures are as satisfying to me as a small square of rich chocolate, melting against my tongue. When I travel, it’s my favorite snack and gift-giving commodity. Once I’m at an international airport and headed home, you’ll find me zipping into duty-free to convert the last of my local currency into chocolate.

At any given time, a vast cache of chocolate is stored in my bedroom closet, where it’s dark and cool. I have baking chocolate from Spain, bags

(and bags) of little Lindt Swiss bars, various flavors of Butlers Irish bars and several varieties of South American chocolate I picked up on a recent trip to Argentina.

On another recent trip, I was transiting at Schiphol Airport in Amsterdam (I’m always pleased when it’s my transit airport returning home because I can also grab some good gouda cheeses). I was dazed by a floor-to-ceiling display of Tony’s Chocolonely. The company was named in reference to the founder’s feeling that he was the only person interested in eradicating slavery in the cocoa industry. I’m a big fan of their corporate philosophy, so naturally, I picked up a few bars to add to the closet col- lection. The bars are unevenly divided in the packages to symbolize the unequal distribution of incomes in the chocolate industry.

Since opening an international office in Portland, Ore., their chocolate is widely available in the U.S., and you can find an assortment of Tony’s at either Yoke’s or Winter Ridge. My favorite is their 70% extra dark chocolate bar, perfect for snacking and baking, especially when chopped up and mixed with chocolate chips for cookies.

We can give (big) thanks to Ruth Wakefield for creating the first chocolate chip cookie. In a moment of culinary inspiration, Wakefield, who ran the Toll House Inn in Whitman,