Do love of coffee and dark chocolate go hand-in-hand? They certainly do for me, and even though they say coffee is not addictive, I'm willing to 'fess up to a self-diagnosis of coffee and dark chocolate addiction! My stock choice is Trader Joe's dark chocolate with vanilla, or something like this 90% cocoa from Lindt. Perhaps some people would throw red wine in there, but I personally have "no comment" on that. ;-)

NPR had a couple of newsworthy stories this week about coffee and dark chocolate.

The first was about "cupping" coffee, which is to coffee what "wine-tasting" is to wine. Read all about how to "cup coffee" in this piece Coffee is the new wine: Here's how to taste it. Includes useful video.

The second piece I would like to draw to your attention was on the health benefits of flavanols in dark chocolate in lowering blood pressure. Seems like it is a minimal decrease, but that just means you should take a higher dose in my book. We also know that it's flavanols in red wine that bring the health benefits of red wine, right? So I would like to volunteer for a study that involves a double-dose of dark chocolate with a double dose of red wine a day. Here's the piece from NPR on the health benefits of dark chocolate.

Just to prove that my reporting is fair and unbiased, NPR also had a piece about how it could be coffee and alcohol that are giving you heartburn: Rethink your drink. Life is full of difficult choices it seems.