Day 328: Chocolate Musings

2011 Total Earnings:  $12,512.60

Today's Contest:  Vosges Chocolatiere's Ultimate Champagne Supernovea Sweepstakes
Prize:  A trip to Chez Odette in France with luxury champagne and artisan chocolates.
How to enter:  Fill out an entry form at a Vosges Chocolate

I was at the O'Hare Airport today and stumbled into a little chocolate kiosk store sandwiched between a McDonald's and gate G6.  It was a Vosges chocolate...one of the more commercially adventurous chocolate places our there right now.  They are the ones who seemed to really kick off the bacon and chocolate craze (Good stocking stuffers....not so much for Hanukah)
I came across a lovely box called the Marchesa Casati Truffle collection.  A dark truffle filled with a salted caramel and sprinkled on top with edible pearl dust.   I mean whuuuut?

But who was this Marchesa Casati?  The icon on the outside depicted a fabulous, if not entirely exhausted femme fatale.

Upon further investigation (ie, simply asking the kiosk keeper, whom I fondly referred to as "Chocolate Lady"), I learned about this woman.  Luisa Casati was a Italian aristocrat living at the turn of the 20th century.  This gal had it going on...she had money, style, lovers, incredible accessories, and lived on a secluded island where she housed exiled gays.  Werk.  She was a muse to artists,  authors,  fashion designers...and most recently chocolatiers.   She lived slash loved to shock and would sometimes walk around with cheetahs on leashes, sometimes wearing snakes as jewelry, or sometimes wearing only strands of pearls for an outfit.  She was quoted as saying, "I want to be a living work of art".

Through her adventures, she ended up 25 million dollars in debt (which makes my own debt seem a weeeee bit more manageable) and was rumored to have dug around dumpsters near the end of her life looking for feathers to put in her hair.  Tres Grey Gardens.
She died a pauper, but her legend lives on.....and now lives on in decadent chocolate....giving us all a little taste of her Dolce Vita.