Dark 70 Chocolate Bar Caramel With Black Sea Salt

I may have to find a way to incorporate this chocolate bar into my sex life. It is THAT GOOD. Like, scandalously good. Like, as I'm eating it, I can't stop whispering "Ohmygod ohmygod ohmygod," and I feel like I'm doing something kind of dirty and naughty every time I take a bite.
That is the caliber of product we are dealing with here.
You have been warned.
Strangely, I have never noticed this chocolate bar in TJ's. I received Dark 70 Chocolate Bar Caramel With Black Sea Salt from friend J as part of a birthday gift, and she had casually offered, "It's really good" when I opened it. I said, "It does sound yummy" and "Funny, I've never seen it before," and then I didn't really think about it much till later that night, when Seth and I dug into it on the couch while watching one of those ridiculous "Real World/Road Rules Challenge" shows on MTV. (Quick episode recap: Young people drinking. Young people arguing drunkenly. Young people in helmets trying to push each other through a tunnel, for money. Young people talking to camera, reflecting on their drunken arguments and helmeted pushing challenge. The end.)

But now back to the chocolate. Oh my. For starters, this is 70%-cacao dark chocolate, my friends. Sooo deliciously bitter! Secondly, the bar itself is thin and delicate, which causes the chocolate to melt very quickly in your mouth---mmm. Thirdly, the combination of caramel and sea salt inside the chocolate is totally perfect and addictive. Salty-sweet! Sweet-salty! ...playing on an endless loop, with that velvety bitterness of the dark chocolate mixed in. PERFECTION. Naughty, naughty perfection.
And I should add, too, that I'm not normally a caramel-with-chocolate fan. That combination is usually too sweet for me, too one-note sugary. But THIS caramel is more buttery than sugary, and the addition of the sea salt keeps the sweetness from overpowering all of the other flavors.

I am going to have to keep one of these in stock in my cupboard at all times, going forward. It is one of those to-be-savored-on-couch-after-kids-have-gone-to-bed indulgences.
Now I just need to find a fabulous TJ's wine to pair it with.
Suggestions?

Dark Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Wafer Cookies

Two of my favorite foods are dark chocolate and peanut butter, so when I find them together, blended into one deliciously sweet-and-salty treat, I reflexively grab that treat and tuck it right into my shopping cart faster than you can say "Try exercising some self-control for once, Mo."

When I spotted TJ's Dark Chocolate Covered Peanut Butter Wafer Cookies earlier this summer, I did not hesitate to pounce on them like a cat pounces on shiny moving objects. Reese's has nothing on TJ's reputation for using pure, simple ingredients---these cookies contain dark chocolate, natural vanilla, peanut butter, sugar, enriched flour...and that's about it. No preservatives or artificial flavors to be found.

Not at all surprisingly, these cookies barely lasted half a week in our house. I loved them, the kids loved them, and Seth presumably would have loved them, too, had he gotten the chance to try one before they were devoured by the rest of us. Maya, in particular, enjoyed them so much that she couldn't understand why I refused to bust them out at breakfast.

What makes these cookies so great and addictive is the inclusion of dark chocolate instead of milk chocolate. The bitterness of the dark chocolate keeps the cookies from being sickeningly sweet and rich, which, in turn, makes these cookies easier to eat in large quantities. The light, crispy wafer cookie inside the chocolate achieves the same feat, so that the cookies seem less sugary than they probably are.  (The label says there are 10 grams of sugar in four cookies. So, yeah: they are sugary; although, I've seen breakfast cereals that contain twice as much sugar than these cookies do.)

The end result is a snack that has crunch, creaminess, sweetness, saltiness, bitterness, and airiness, and that really can't hold a permanent place in my cupboard because I lack the self-discipline to handle such a perfectly delicious treat in a mature and reasonable fashion.

Cocoa Powder Unsweetened

Thanks to Joe, I can make a warm, comforting, decadent-tasting mug of hot cocoa and feel very little guilt about it. Trader Joe's Cocoa Powder Unsweetened is the only cocoa powder I've come across that isn't "processed with alkali" and that contains literally nothing but cocoa powder. At 20 calories per tablespoon and one gram of fat, this fine, silky cocoa powder feels almost healthful to me, in that it's likely delivering the benefits of chocolate without all the saturated fat and sugar.
For homemade hot cocoa, I just pour milk (usually 2%) into a mug, heat it in the microwave for 2 minutes or so, then add a couple of heaping teaspoons of the cocoa powder. I stir a LOT and for a LONG time to fully blend the powder into the milk and break up most of the little lumps. Then I add sugar to taste, usually not much more than a teaspoon or so, because I like bitterness.
And that's it! I make it for my kids, too, of course, and they enjoy it. (Don't get me wrong---they'll suck down that Swiss Miss crap just as fast, but they certainly don't turn up their noses at the homemade stuff.)
I should mention that I haven't used this cocoa powder for baking, much, mostly because I don't bake chocolate cakes and the like all that often. My friend and mother-in-law, Lala, did use it for brownies the last time she visited us, and oh my, those brownies did not disappoint! They were perfectly rich and chocolatey. Mmmm.

Chocolate European Style Lowfat Yogurt

Let's jump right in and waste no time: Trader Joe's does a kick-ass job with their yogurts. Would you agree? Michael Ian Black once joked on his "Mike and Tom Eat Snacks" podcast that approximately 80% of grocery-store real estate these days is dedicated to yogurt, and thankfully, that figure holds *true* (give or take) for every Trader Joe's I've shopped. And really, hooray for that, because first of all, yogurt is tasty and interesting and healthy, and there are so many varieties and flavors to sample and experiment with; and secondly, Trader Joe's yogurts in particular are generally high quality and priced well. Bring on the 'gurt, I say!

...and for the first of many TJ's 'gurts to be featured on this blog AND the first Mo Loves Joe product post, period, I present to you Chocolate European Style Lowfat Yogurt. (Resisting strong urge to insert much-needed hyphen between "European" and "Style," btw. It's not a Chocolate European we're referring to here---thankfully---it's a chocolate-flavored European-style yogurt. But, okay.)
This yogurt is simple yet decadent, and that's why it's fabulous. It is tangy and tart, as yogurt should be, plus chocolately, bitter, and mildly sweet. Other chocolate yogurts from other places and other manufacturers are hardly yogurts at all---they are nauseatingly sweet confections and read more like pudding in flavor and texture. This yogurt is thick and creamy and feels "real." Simply put: I can eat THIS chocolate yogurt as a late-morning snack and feel good about myself afterward.