Connoisseurs of the Finer Things

It may come as no surprise to you that I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Yes a mouthful). However, we are generally more commonly referred to as Mormons or LDS. I'd say that might save your mouth and mind the aggravation of memorization and your short hand the unease of remembering where to put a hyphen in the name. And, as you may also know, us Mormons have a fairly strict diet code that calls for us to, among other things, eat meat sparingly, eat plenty of grains, not drink alcohol, coffee or non-herbal teas. Because of this, it is amusing to me to see the sorts of things that other members of my church become connoisseur's and aficionados of (and yes, I realize I just ended that sentence with a preposition). Here is a list of what my friends (and myself) tend to be connoisseurs of:

*Chocolate
*Cheese
*Meats
*Baked Goods
*Juices
*Sauces

Now the reason I am sticking to just food products is because the educated elite (upper middle-class, yuppie types) tend to view themselves as something far superior to the rest of the world because they can recite different champagne and wine labels and years and tell people whether it has an earthy or fruity taste. To further their snub of the rest of the world that spends more time trying to scrape enough money together in order to buy a bowl of rice to feed a family of twelve, they boast of their knowledge of exotic coffee beans and capuccino and latte combinations. So, of course, to keep up with the Joneses, the LDS community have become purveyors of the aforementioned goods. As it turns out, chocolate is grown all over the world, from Brazil to New Guinea to Aruba and refined in Switzerland, Germany, Belgium, England and the US. And of course, depending on where it is grown, it has certain flavors. Chocolate from New Guinea has a bittersweet fruity flavor, while chocolate from Brazil has a richer smoother flavor.

Now I'm not going to go too deep into all of the combinations, flavors and possibilities of all of these foods, but suffice it to say, the LDS community is not missing much without wine and coffee. For instance, with juices, with just mango alone there are more types than even apples. Some exotic fruits that you may not have heard of are acerola, acai, mangosteen, ciriguela, chibutchicaba. And all have a plethora of health benefits and taste selection to offer. I'll go into more detail about this in later posts, but I'd love to hear your thoughts.