Q: If Harry Potter Jumped Off of a Bridge, Would You Do It, Too?

I mean, I guess maybe. Although I'd be more likely to follow Hermione Granger into the pitch. But here: the characters in Harry Potter eat chocolate after they've been visited by the dementors, who, if you are among the four people left in the world who haven't read the books or seen the movies (shame on you), are evil, soul-sucking wraiths sent by Darth Vader. I mean Voldemort. To destroy all that is good in the world.

Hypothesis:
So I figured, hey, if chocolate can practically reinstate someone's frozen, devastated immortal soul, it can probably help me quit smoking.

I originally planned to eat a chocolate bar a day for the first two weeks of quitting. But things got a little out of hand and here I am, on day six, and I've eaten the entirety of the two weeks' supply, plus some.

I tried to take a photo of what's left, but my camera's macro lens seemed more interested in the dog hair on the table than the chocolate crumbles, so I gave up.

Methodology:
I started out with half-priced Easter candy (Whoppers in the shape and color of Easter eggs? Count me in), then moved on to such classy, timeless favorites as Reese's peanut butter cups (require no review, nor introduction: just plain awesome).

Then I got all fancy. Or, as fancy as the local grocery store would let me get, because finding truly fancy chocolate requires more money than I have and also a trip to Fort Collins. Which, by the way, means a trip past about 3,403,212 gas stations who sell the brand of cigarette I like, and give you free matches so you hardly have to commit. Because let's face it, it's a little weird to have six lighters for one little stick of incense. It gets people talking.

I was going to review each chocolate bar as I went through, but the idea of doing that sort of made me want to smoke a cigarette, so I decided instead to focus on which ones were absolutely best, and I'm just going to tell you which they are, and that you ought to eat them.

Findings:

I realized early into my chocolate-eating binge that dark chocolate just wasn't going to cut it for this purpose. I love dark chocolate. I love cocoa nibs. I will geek out over baking chocolate, bitter as a smoker sans nicotine, any time you want. But for this particular moment in my life, I needed to be able to consume as much chocolate as humanly possible in as little amount of time as possible. So after the first few tries at darks, I shifted to what Anita lovingly calls "crap."

When they say a candy bar wrapper houses 2.5 servings, they're assuming you're eating something--anything--other than chocolate.

Milk chocolate tastes really, really good with a very cold glass of milk.

Chocolate for breakfast will never fail to thrill me. It is the residual five-year-old within me. To this day, my sister and I like to sing, a la The Cosby Show, "Dad is great! He gives us chocolate cake!" because in one episode, Claire Huxtable left for the weekend and Cliff, good man that he is, feeds those lucky bastards chocolate cake for nearly every meal.

And finally, thanks to Bryce, Anita and Sara for providing me with more chocolate than is wise to consume in less than a week.

Conclusions:

Most Interesting Combination of Chocolates Which Were Never Meant to Meet: Lindt Excellence White Coconut + Lindt Excellence Intense Orange.
The former is pretty easy to infer and what's most awesome about this candy bar is that it's the only white chocolate bar I've ever tasted that doesn't taste like soap. I think it's because the soap part is wearing a cloak of coconut. The Intense Orange bar is actually the only dark chocolate bar that did the trick for me, and mostly only in combination with the white, which probably, essentially rendered the dark chocolate into milk chocolate. The label claims there are also almond slivers in this bar, but I hardly chewed, so I didn't really notice.

Best Expensive Chocolate Bar That's Actually Not All That Quality, Pretends to be European, Can Be Found in Your Local Grocery Store Year-Round, Still Tastes Good Stale and Which Reminds Me of Childhood in a Good Way: Toblerone.
I was adventurous and tried the Fruit & Nut version of this bar, too. The purple packaging just got me all excited. But what they mean by "fruit" is raisins, and what that means, apparently, is that the honey element of the traditional Toblerone bar dominates the taste of anything else and you feel immediately like brushing your teeth.

And no, I wasn't kidding about it being expired.

The bar I bought even featured careful Sharpie showcasing of the retroactive expiration date, yet I was too weary to return to the store to fix this egregious error. And it still tasted great. That's gotta be worth something. Give those preservatives a hand! And the Swiss! Although it's distributed by Kraft, in Illinois. Which is probably why it's so readily available on the aisles simultaneously marked "Candy" and "Diet Food" in the grocery store.

Best Solid Milk Chocolate Bar Simply Because I'm Gullible and Know This Brand is Excellent, So I Hardly Paid Attention to How it Really Tasted: Green & Black's Organic Milk Chocolate.
I have little to nothing to say about this bar, so I'll just type out the label's boasting points for you: Made with fine Trinitario cocoa beans for a rich taste//34% Cocoa Content. There now, we've all learned a word. Though I haven't bothered to look it up yet.

Best Solid Milk Chocolate Bar EVER, Which Features Strange Tribal Designs on the Package (Possibly Including a Hair Pick or Two?) and Annoyed Me to No End Before Tasting It: Divine Milk Chocolate.
It's Fair Trade Certified, so I can stop feeling bad about myself. The tagline is also "Heavenly Chocolate with a heart," which is interesting. Especially capitalization-wise. And I guess it explains why the "v" in Divine is a Smashing-Pumpkins-Logo-Drawn-by-12-Year-Old-Girl-Esque heart.

The inside wrapper is gold, which always wins me over. The expiration date stamp reads "BEST BEFORE END," which felt prophetic and customizable. The pieces weren't too big, so I could eat just a few and then just a few more and then just a few more and it seemed to last forever even though it was probably only ten minutes. When it was gone, I mourned. And nothing I tasted afterward held a candle. I wanted to melt it and drink it, but I've worked at Starbucks too many times to put myself through that crap again.