story and photos by Kayte Deioma
As if a chocolate spa treatment wasn’t enough, Santa Fe introduced me to my new best friend: weatherproof chocolate.
Chris White and Cliff Perry came up with the idea when they opened up a bag of melted chocolate after hiking on a hot summer day. The two of them founded Chocolate Smith, a chocolate shop in the funky 2 nd St. area of Santa Fe. From here they market their “weatherproof chocolate” to the world.
Consisting of various flavors of dark chocolate “paté” coated in Dutch cheese wax, the chocolate blocks are waterproof and resist “blooming,” the separation of ingredients that leaves chocolate splotchy and unappetizing after changes in temperature. The “paté” is a dark chocolate ganache, similar in consistency to fudge.
Several flavors of chocolate are available in the colorful weatherproof wax. Travel bars come in plain Dark Chocolate, Dark Chocolate 
Raspberry, Dark Chocolate Peanut Butter, Orange Chili Chocolate and Nuts and Berries. These are the basic utilitarian “packer squares”, great for hiking, camping and other forms of travel. It’s a great gift to ship to friends and family members in Iraq, since it will survive both the trip and the heat.
In addition to the travel bars, the chocolate “paté” comes in a variety of fun, shippable weatherproof shapes. Two different chili chocolate “patés” come in Southwest-themed shapes. The Sunset Orange and Mucho Ancho chili chocolates come in the shape of red or green chili peppers, a cowboy boot or hat or a cactus. Other chocolate “patés” are formed into hearts, sunflowers, gingerbread boys, ducks and rainbow trout, all dipped in appropriately colored cheese wax.
I carried a “packer square” of Orange Chili Chocolate around in my purse for
several days in the ninety degree heat of Santa Fe, then packed it in my checked luggage for the trip home. The plastic wrap got a little clingy with the wax, but came off easily. For the heck of it, I immersed the pink, orange and yellow wax-covered bar in water for a few minutes to put it through a pseudo rainy-day test.
After pealing away the wax, the chocolate was in perfect condition. The rich flavor of Dark Orange Chili has a nice bite, with no bitter aftertaste. It has a more fudgy texture than a regular chocolate bar, but if you’re craving chocolate under chocolate-unfriendly weather conditions, it will do the trick. The chocolate “patés” also come in large “party rounds” that resemble cheese wheels. “We have to tell people to peel off the wax,” says Kari Keenan of Chocolate Smith. “It’s still a new concept, and they think it’s edible.”
If you’ll have a chance to eat your chocolate without the threat of extreme weather conditions, Chocolate Smith has a slew of other gourmet chocolate treats with a Santa Fe twist. These include Dipped Caramel with Sea Salt, Pińon Caramel Squares, Cinnamon Crunch, Dipped Ginger and many more. The shop is also known for its chocolate barks in flavors like Red or Green Chili Pistachio Bark, Mocha Almond Bark, Mountain Bark, a white chocolate bark with coconut, cherries, almonds and toffee, and my new favorite, White Chocolate Lemon Lavender with Almonds. The Pecos Peanut Butter Fingers with a lingering chili bite are also addictive. To continue the Southwest theme, Chocolate Smith’s dark and white chocolate hand-painted pottery shards have also become quite popular.
All of the chocolates mentioned above are made in house. There are a few imported chocolates also available, as well as drinking chocolate from Kakawa Chocolate House, a local company that makes their drinking chocolate from ancient South American and not-quite-so-ancient European recipes.
Although Chocolate Smith is not a café – there’s no place to sit – they’ve recently made coffee available to enjoy with your chocolates. You can easily pass a half hour or so tasting the samples to find your favorites and learning all about their unique products.
If you can’t make it to Santa Fe, you can order your Weatherproof Chocolate from www.ChocolateSmith.com. They gladly ship to destinations around the world.
Many people come to Long Beach from far away places to sun themselves on the beach. With only 32 days of rain per year, you have a reasonably good chance of visiting Long Beach on a day when it’s not raining. One might expect the other 333 days to be sunny. They usually are, eventually, after the infamous “marine layer” burns off. But if you happen to arrive in the middle of June gloom which, despite the nomenclature, can last from May through September, and you’ve had enough of lying on the beach under your beach towel to keep warm, you might want to check out some of the great indoor alternatives Long Beach can offer.
You can’t go wrong on a rainy day in Long Beach taking the kids out for a day at the Aquarium of the Pacific. A real deluge might keep the Lorikeet forest closed, but it won’t bother the sharks and rays in the outdoor touch pools. It will just scare away a bit of the competition for a good position to two-finger touch these creatures of the sea.
Most of the Pacific Ocean animals on display in the Aquarium can be viewed without your umbrella. The Weird, Wild and Wonderful Passport Book that you receive at the entrance helps identify the various underwater residents as you go. It includes a fun quiz at the back for school-age children or anyone who wants to test their memory. Weekdays the schools of fish are visited by schools of little people identified with matching bandanas, hats or T-shirts.
her calf suspended from the ceiling. The Aquarium is divided into geographic regions which reproduce the local habitat for the undersea inhabitants of that area. At the end of the hall, the Blue Cavern exhibit, extending two stories high, represents the habitat of the Southern California Coast and Islands. At feeding time, you can see exotic Homo sapiens in scuba gear swimming among the California barracudas, shovelnose guitarfish and leopard sharks. Volunteer divers give underwater presentations several times a day. The two-legged scuba-fish also make appearances in the Tropical Reef Exhibit.
It is easy to become transfixed for long periods of times watching the translucent jellies floating through the blue water of the Open Ocean or waiting to see if the balloonfish are going to balloon in the Sea of Cortez. If it’s too wet to have the Seals and Sea Lion presentation outside, you can still view these sea mammals from inside the Southern California and Baja Gallery. You can also watch the sea otters cavort and play in and out of water in the Northern Pacific Gallery.
In the outdoor section of the Southern California and Baja Exhibit, you can give the two-finger touch to a giant green anemone, purple sea urchin or bat star in the sheltered Rocky Intertidal exhibit or to the nearby stingrays and whiptail rays competing for your attention in the Ray Touchpool. Downstairs you can pet the white-spotted bamboo sharks, zebra sharks and many other small shark varieties in the Shark Lagoon.