Omnivore - Eat your Chia pet, smoke your chocolate

Today is Thursday and that means the Sugar Coated Radical is open for business. It also means that if I take the wrong right route home from the gym, my car’s homing device automatically drives me to the chocolate shop.

Today I tried something amazing. I noticed a heap of glistening shards, each about the size of a potato chip, on the counter. They looked like freshly mined gold. Owner Taria Camerino explained to me that it was “chia brittle.”

“Chia?”

“Chia seeds,” she said. “You know, like the Chia Pets. The seeds taste kind of like sesame.”

The flavor was indeed as good as the appearance. The sticky brittle, slightly crispy at first, rapidly melts in the mouth, flooding it with sweet caramelized sugar and the toasty flavor of the seeds. I could eat it like Cracker Jacks.

Another newbie available today was fudge made with pecans. I’ve never been much of a fudge eater. It always tastes repulsively like thick chocolate icing to me. But Camerino’s is blond, caramel-like and shaped into pieces the size of her chocolates. It seems to be as much pecan as fudge. I can’t stop eating it.

Camerino plans, by the way, to be at the Urban Picnic at Sweet Auburn Curb Market on Friday (April 29). She doesn’t have a stand or a food truck but plans to work the crowd by carrying her goodies in a cigarette tray. Hunt her down. (Check out the Picnic’s Facebook page.)