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One look at the bright red wrapper of this bar and you would think we’ve finally found the end-all of spicy chocolate bars: two chili peppers and a piece of chocolate are pictured with “Extra Fine dark chocolate with chili.”
However, after trying it, we’re sorry to say that this isn’t it. That isn’t to say this is not a good bar, far from it; it is pretty good and it is really spicy, but probably more for the sake of being spicy. It’s just that it’s not quite there, at least in our heads. There’s chili pepper seeds interspersed in the chocolate, and the chocolate’s flavor doesn’t complement the spice as well as it could.

We really like some of these Dagoba bars we have managed to find. We hadn’t noticed this one before and were immediately intrigued by the concept: blueberries and lavender.
This has a really great aroma and mouthfeel - the lavender is a wonderful complement to the blueberries. Like other Dagoba dark chocolate, this has a relatively high cocao content - 59% - and is all organic. The lavender bouquet hits your mouth first, and riding in under this wave comes the dark chocolate and then closes out with the blueberries. A real nice three-part movement of chocolate.
Four year old: “It tastes like flowery and bread a litle bit. And a little bit of strawberry.”

Found this in the discount bin of our local Target. This is a nice, fairly spicy bar, with good texture from the cocao been nibs mixed in. I was surprised, honestly, with the balance of ingredients in this bar; it’s not what we expected. What threw us off is that the ingredients list “spices” without being specific, but the front wrapper says Ceylon cinnamon. We’re guessing cinnamon is probably the leader among these, but we can’t say for sure. The point is that these “spices” are what even out the flavor of this bar nicely. A good chocolate experience, more exotic than what we expected.
Four-year-old says this is a tiny little bit spicy. “It’s okay.”

Another Choxie from Target, this is more candy bar than chocolate. Dark chocolate coating around soft, lemon white chocolate truffle filling inside. Nice, light, airy, almost fluffy tasting. I think lemon is so-so; it could be nicer if it were less sweet and more tart. If you’re a dark chocolate fan, you can skip this bar; this would be more suited for a milk chocolate lover, because of the white creamy center filling.
Four-year-old: “It’s tastes good and I like it. It tastes like cinnamon. A tiny bit of lemon, but it tastes like fruit punch or strawberry.”

Ah, Lindt. Seeing those five letters makes my salivary glands kick in, and vague memories of immature chocolate and red wine pairings from college waft around in my brain.
On the whole, Lindt chocolate bars, especially the plainest ones, are consistently sublime. High cocao content, beautifully blended and meltingly smooth. Never a bitter aftertaste, and always an even set of mouthfeel notes firing off as the chocolate melts in your mouth.
This particular bar is a sandwich of dark chocolate (70% cocao) with a layer of dark cocao mousse inside. The end result is awesome: sweeter dark chocolate first, giving way to a cocoa, almost lighter, powdery tasting mousse, like a flourless chocolate tart, but not as sweet. A very intense chocolate, but not as dense as you would expect - just a pleasure to indulge with!

Here we are, one week away from EarthLink pulling the plug on the Wireless Philadelphia Wi-Fi network, and we have not seen or heard anything further about it since the original announcement. Will some non-profit org come to the rescue? Will Gov. Rendell broker a deal? Will the city of Philadelphia sue Earthlink to keep its equipment in place?
What I find interesting is that Earthlink claims there’s 5,000 paying customers (I’m one of them). If we’re paying $20 a month for wireless access, that’s $100,000 a month, or $1.2 million a year. What exactly are the costs of maintaining the network, or more specifically, what are the top line items in maintaining the network? Staff, backup equipment, replacement equipment, utility bills? If securing customers is the issue, why not offer a cheaper rate to get more people to sign up?
I’m waiting to hear if Greg Goldman makes any sort of last-ditch announcement, or will this whole thing quietly fade away without even a whimper? And what about the free-to-the-public areas around Center City, do those get dismantled as well? Isn’t anyone else aghast at this prospect - not having free wifi around the Convention Center will be a major hassle for conventioneers, let alone the service it provides to center city tourists and residents.
Let’s hope we see something come up in the next few days….

So Philadelphia magazine releases a list every year of Top Docs, but these are usually grouped by specialty only. In keeping with our lists for Philadelphia-area hospitals, here are the top 10 hospitals by number of Top Docs mentioned in the May 2008 issue. Keep in mind several things: this is a completely arbitrary list (i.e., the number of top docs is not necessarily indicative of quality of care), this is a total number of Top Docs, and is not measured against total employed doctors at a facility, and finally, counts maybe off by as many as a few as this was hand-counted. Corrections are welcomed.

Top 10 Hospitals by Number of ‘Top Docs’

In our continuing series where we look at the rates of infection and mortality reported by Philadelphia area hospitals, here we filter out the hospitals with the lowest mortality rates for cases reported as Congestive Heart Failure. What is interesting to note is the low actual number of cases, consider the rates are reported as per 1,000 cases.

Peer Group 1, Mortality Rates for Congestive Heart Failure

Received this nice note from Earthlink this morning:

Dear EarthLink Wi-Fi Subscriber,

This email contains important information about your EarthLink
Wi-Fi service. EarthLink will stop operating its wireless
network in Philadelphia. EarthLink is providing our Wi-Fi
subscribers with a thirty (30) day transition period through
Thursday, June 12, 2008. This means that your EarthLink Wi-Fi
account will terminate on June 12, 2008.

In addition, your EarthLink dial-up access and email account
that EarthLink provides with the Wi-Fi service will also
terminate unless you transfer your account to another EarthLink
Internet access service.

EarthLink values you as a customer and we apologize for any
inconvenience that this may cause. We would like to assist you
in transitioning to another EarthLink Internet access service.

We are making several special offers on our DSL and dial-up
Internet access services available to our EarthLink Wi-Fi
subscribers in Philadelphia to assist in this transition.
EarthLink will try to contact you by telephone shortly to answer
any questions you may have about your EarthLink Wi-Fi account
and to explain how you can transfer your account to another
EarthLink Internet access service. You may also call us at
1-877-WIFI-HELP (1-877-943-4435) with any questions.

Please Note: To avoid an interruption in your EarthLink
Internet access and termination of your EarthLink email account,
please contact us before June 12, 2008.  If you purchased or are
renting a modem from EarthLink for your EarthLink Wi-Fi service,
our service representative will provide details on how to return
the modem at no cost to you. If you purchased your modem from
EarthLink, we will give you a refund of the price you paid to us
for the modem once we’ve received your returned modem.

When your EarthLink Wi-Fi account is terminated, we will credit
to your account any remaining time that you paid for. Depending
upon your credit card company or bank, this credit may take up
to 30 days to appear on your statement.

Thank you for being our valued Wi-Fi subscriber. We look
forward to providing you with Internet service for years to come!

Sincerely,

EarthLink Support

Nice! So much for this great service.  This was such a useful feature of working in and around Philadelphia: the ability to log onto a half-decent WiFi network and gain internet access. I had previously tried the Verizon USB cell-modem with intermittent results an lots of connection dropping, for nearly four times the price of the monthly Earthlink access.

What remains to be seen: what about the ‘free’ nodes, like at the Convention Center, Love Park, Reading Terminal Market, etc.? Do those remain, or they going the way of the Market Street trolley as well?

In an objective attempt to qualify which hospitals are ‘better’ or ‘worse’ in the Philadelphia area, I’ve been poring over some interesting data provided by the Pennsylvania Healthcare Cost Containment Council (www.phc4.org). From this organization, we can see total cases reported for infections among patients.

I grouped hospitals by their peer group, isolated the largest hospitals - here are Peer Group 2 hospital rankings, for cases reported of infections per 1,000 patients, in 2006.

Peer Group 2, Lowest Infection Rates

In an objective attempt to qualify which hospitals are ‘better’ or ‘worse’ in the Philadelphia area, I’ve been poring over some interesting data provided by the Pennsylvania Healthcare Cost Containment Council (www.phc4.org). From this organization, we can see total cases reported for infections among patients.

I grouped hospitals by their peer group, isolated the largest hospitals - here are results from peer group 1. These are ranked by their reported rates of infection, per 1,000 patients.

Peer Group 1, Lowest Infection Rates

From Langhorne Creek in Australia, another red blend. My wife really enjoyed this blend of shiraz and viognier, but I was just okay with it. This wine is packed with fruit and has the hint of sweetness and butteryness of a viognier. It even has some subtle pepper from the shiraz. This would be a nice summer drinking red since it’s not very heavy, but still complex. katherine (age 4) says it smells good.

We’ve been noticing how vineyards are assembling interesting blends of whites and reds. Just when you finally settled on a preference for a cabernet franc/shiraz blend over a cab sauvignon/pinot noir, now we see blends of multiple varietals, which in the whites has become really intruiging. Hmm.

The label on this particular bottle has a picture of a rope, the label itself is nicely diecut to exude something old-Westernish in appearance. What does this have to do with blending white wines?

Well, the label alleges that the “gnarly, ancient” [dude!] vines they grow without water and constant winds produce grapes of exceptional character. And, indeed it does. This is a really nice, cheap white table wine. There’s a hint of fruity sweetness, it’s off dry so it’s still crisp. The viognier brings a nice flavor, and there’s the buttery smoothness of the chardonnay. Overall, this is a really easy pair with seafood or chinese food.

We’d definitely pick a couple of these up next time we’re in Jersey…

Yummy! Nice bite, solid red nose, this is a great wine with red, rare steak or even a meaty pizza. I have to admit, I was skeptical with a name like Tempra Tantrum, but one the first swill, I was convinced. Good solid woody, earthy nose and hints of ripe berry, this finishes very smoothly with light tannin. Great after it’s been open an hour or so. We’d buy this again, definitely - I think this was pretty cheap, too, under $10?

Nice dark chocolate (72% cocoa), made by Redstone Foods in Texas. Infused with chipotle chili pepper, this has a methodically increasing heat level as the chocolate washes away out of your mouth. The heat is pretty even and strong, and hits its peak about half a minute after the last bit of chocolate is gone.

This is a good hot bar, but its just okay overall: the chocolate is okay - it doesn’t posess the nice mouthfeel that some higher-end chocolates we’ve tried have. The chipotle pepper is nice and hot, but I think its that we’re looking for something with a bit more complexity, more character. There’s a good reason that we’ve seen bars like this, but with cinnamon, nutmeg, or other spices - it rounds out the flavor, and adds some oomph to the finish. With this bar, it just ends, and that’s it, no lingering mmmm….