Jonesbar - Dark Chocolate Almond (bar) - May 6, 2022

Chocolate of the Day

Jonesbar
Dark Chocolate Almond (bar)
Good + 
Weight: 1.7 oz. (47 g.) in total bar
Calories: 210 calories in 1 bar
Cost: $1.49 for 1 bar
Purchased from: Grocery Outlet Bargain Market, Palo Alto, CA

Welcome to Day #2 of Chocolate, Nuts and Nibs Theme Week.

Today's 5-ingredient Dark Chocolate Almond (bar) was from Jonesbar (Manasquan, NJ). The company offers several date sweetened, compressed fruit and nut bars--some with chocolate.

The aroma: a rich melange of chocolate, nut, dried fruit (date, fig), oat/malt, and seed notes. (Note: there was no oat, malt or fig. These were just aromatic impressions.)

The texture was moist and date-y with a soft chew. 

The flavor was a naturally sweet and complex blend of dates, almonds, dark chocolate and seeds (chia) with a barely there, fleeting earthiness (nothing unpleasant). A scintilla of salt contributed the fifth element.

This sealed, single-serving organic bar fueled a hike today. It was a far cry from yesteryear's industrial energy bars with scads of ingredients (including additives, preservatives, fillers, colors, sugars). Those early bars had capitalized on (and almost replaced, for a while) the home-made fruit, nut and chocolate trail mixes (stored in leaky plastic bags in the bottom of a day pack) that many backpackers, climbers and hikers assembled themselves. Evolution is a good thing.

Ingredients: Organic dates, organic almonds, organic 100% cacao chips, organic chia seeds, Himalayan pink sea salt.

Allergen-related information: Contains almonds. "Handcrafted in a top secret facility that processes peanuts and other nuts. Real foods may contain pit or nutshell pieces."