Chocolate!

Today was a very special day. Christine collected me, Cat and Chanel at 10 a.m. to take us to a mystery destination, for a girls’ day out to celebrate my 60th birthday. Christine had organised the whole thing in collaboration with Cat, and did all the driving on this rather wet day. We headed north up the A9 and stopped at Perthshire Foods for a bit of shopping and an early lunch. I have never been there before and the gift shop is absolutely lovely, with lots of festive and unusual items. Lunch was great, with friendly staff, and it was just as well that Christine had booked a table because it got very busy. Then onwards to our special treat - a chocolate tasting at the Highland Chocolatier near Pitlochry. What a brilliant idea from the Reid girls! It was fun from beginning to end. First we had an audio described tour of the premises, and then we were ushered to the table where our “chocolate flights” were laid out for us. Christine had cleverly ordered two dark and two milk chocolate flights, which meant that we could share them and get double the tasting experience. The tasting was also audio described, and as the narrator (who is the owner) deplored the quality of “tasteless supermarket chocolate” for the umpteenth time we couldn’t help but have a wee smile at each other! The chocolates were laid out in order on a placemat, which gave descriptions of each but left out one or two flavours, which meant that we really had to concentrate to try to discern what we were tasting. The flavours were carefully thought out and unusual; for example raspberry paired with a just a little black pepper to bring out the flavour. I won’t mention any other ingredients in case one of my readers wishes to visit the Highland Chocolatier themselves - which I would thoroughly recommend. What a fun afternoon we had. Of course we ended up in the shop where we purchased some of our favourite chocolate. And then sadly it was time to depart, and Christine took us safely home despite being held up by a traffic jam caused by an accident near Perth. I had a brilliant time.