Early Valentine's Day Treats

As an early Valentine's Day celebration we had some delicious chocolate fondue and a chocolate lover's wine.  This came together perfectly, but it was mostly serendipity.  A few weeks ago at the liquor store Todd was convinced to buy the wine by the owner who said "your wife will love this."  It is actually a nice fruity red with a little chocolate added in - not just chocolate tones or notes.  Then when we were preparing for the Super Bowl at Costco Todd suggested we get strawberries for fondue but we ended up with more than enough tasty food from Sal's so we didn't get to dessert after the Super Bowl.  For the chocolate we had a 10 pound (no that is not a typo) bar of delicious chocolate all the way from San Francisco that we got as a Christmas gift last year.  We'd been saving for a special occasion and this turned out to be it!  With the help of some quick Googling I got a ridiculously simple recipe for turning the bar of chocolate into tasty dipping sauce.  The addition of heavy cream and some double espresso vodka were key to the transformation and the recipe also suggested some toasted nuts.  At first Todd vetoed putting the toasted almonds I discovered in the fridge into the chocolate and then begrudgingly agreed to let me put them in a little bowl on the table.  However, once he tried a little nibble of strawberry dipped in chocolate and then in the nuts he wanted to know why I was hogging them by keeping them on my side of the table.  The strawberries had actually been disappointingly mediocre when I'd tried to eat them plain earlier in the day, but the delicious chocolate and toasted nuts transformed them into yummy goodness and the slightly sweet wine was the perfect compliment!

Here we have Todd using some serious tools to get the chocolate broken up to go into the fondue.