A well travelled parcel

It might be a terribly gloomy, rain swept Autumnal day but it has been brightened considerably by the postman delivering a box full of goodies from the extraordinarily well travelled E in Belgium. Though her actual location has little bearing on the contents of my blogging by mail parcel as the contents origins are wonderfully eclectic and cover a wide range of exotic countries.
So where do I start? Well I think at the first thing I tasted – the Petits Trésors, dark chocolate biscuits with lemon and ginger from France. And they are incredibly moreish, I adore dark chocolate and ginger already but the lemon gives it an extra zing. A firm favourite already!
The next thing I tried was a square of Chocolat Noir au Thym – more dark chocolate but this time with thyme. It’s fabulously aromatic and definitely different – and from Belgium. What E has done that I am so grateful for is included thoughtful notes for those with woeful language skills (me for instance) and identified the intriguing extra to the chocolate and thyme which I could translate as linseed (which I most certainly couldn’t translate).
Staying on the chocolate theme are chocolate hagelsag or sprinkles from Holland. The seem to be for scattering on bread or toast but as E says they are much better dusted over ice cream and I think I would have to agree.
From E’s native Sweden there are Djungelvrål (which she helpfully translates as ‘cries from the jungle’) which is salty liquorice. E says they ‘are not for the faint hearted’ and they are madly salty I must concede. Though being a fan of liquorice I like the taste after the salty wave has passed. Coincidentally my last blogging by mail parcel courtesy of Anna from Sweden acquainted me with such delights.
There’s a little blue tin of Galangal from Thailand, smoked white peppercorns from Cameroon and an intriguing test tube of wild black peppercorns from Madagascar. I do like a good grind of peppercorns and so many dishes so am looking forward to trying something a little more interesting.
From a little closer to home is a jar of dried mushroom and parsley from Italy. E always stocks up when she’s in Italy and this will absolutely be featured next time I whip up some pasta.
I’ve also got some tea made from grape pits from South Korea and mulberry tea from Laos which E became addicted to whilst travelling there. E’s most recent trip took her to the Dominican Republic and she picked up a macadamia nut wafer and a dinky little pink pestle and mortar.
Thank you again E for my wonderful little parcel, I have many more exciting foodstuffs to explore. And thanks to Stephanie’s latest Blogging by Mail event, now I really must finish off my parcel to another food blogger and find a post office to send it from – my local one sadly being no more.