Misc stuff (chocolate, weaving, Ghana)

Heard back from Ellie, the woman behind Aba Tours, and it looks like I *will* get a chance to study all sorts of things:

• batik
• basketweaving
• goldsmithing
• beadmaking
• Ashanti weaving
• Ewe weaving

and possibly indigo dyeing, up in northern Ghana.

I also got my second round of shots today – rabies #2, hepatitis B #2, and meningococcal (meningitis). Two weeks from now I get rabies #3, hep B #3, hep A #2, and polio. That leaves me free to take the typhoid vaccine the week after that. Whee! Is there anything left to vaccinate against?

The chocolate-macadamia nut fudge, by the way, came out just fine. It just needed a day or two to settle and for the cocoa butter to crystallize. It’s excellent. (And this is from a woman who doesn’t even like (most) chocolate fudge.) So now I have:

• chocolate-covered dried apricots
• chocolate-covered dried plums
• chocolate-covered dried pears
• chocolate-covered macadamia nuts (a few)
• cherry-almond clusters (a few)
• chocolate-macadamia nut fudge
• white chocolate-coconut-mint-lime fudge
• white chocolate-lavender-lemon fudge
• maple walnut fudge

to which I will add chocolate-covered caramels and English toffee this week/weekend.

This weekend I will also pull out the chocolate molds and start the first half of the chocolates going – you have to pour the top half of the mold first, let it harden partway,then pour out the rest of the chocolate to create a hollow. Then, later, you pipe in the filling and close up the bottom. I’m creating the hollow molds this weekend.

Hmm. I’d better figure out what flavors of truffle I’m planning to make, too. At the moment I plan to have:

• jasmine tea (‘cuz it’s my favorite)
• truffle (as in the fungus)
• caramelized banana (yummy yummy!)
• orange
• whisky (MacAllan 12 Scotch)

and I’m not sure about the rest. Lavender sounds good, and Earl Grey tea isn’t so bad either. I like green tea truffles, but I did them last year, so I’m not sure I’ll do them again. (It was neat to see how radically different different green-tea blends could be, though…I tried three kinds last year and they produced very different green-tea truffles.)

Hmm. I’m sorely tempted to do Thai tea truffles. Perhaps I will…

Well, I have at least a week to think about this more. I should look up what other chocolatiers are doing, too.

I dyed the silk for my next weaving project this morning. I’m not sure if I will get to it this week since this really is chocolate frenzy week, but we’ll see…