Bitter is Better?

I'm incredibly lazy. I originally wanted to title this blog 'The Missing Ingredient', not to imply that my take on food was something unique, but that if an ingredient is on a high shelf sometimes I'll just leave it out of a recipe. Laziness is often synonymous with gluttony and, well, I can't exactly deny that. I guess that's why I was amazed and charmed by the life a honeybee leads.

1. Birth. Baby bees are fed with royal jelly, then honey and pollen.
2. Work - mainly consists of eating pollen and honey.
3. Learn to Fly.
4. Learn the "bee dance" or "waggle dance"
5. Die - get this. When we extracted the honey from the combs, we let it drain into a huge green pot. I left for a few minutes to come back and find numerous bees wallowing in the honey, clearly drowning, and yet....their tongues were out. As the bees struggled not to get sucked deeper and deeper, they were simultaneously trying to eat as much honey as possible. Two bees had flown directly under the honey stream and were getting pushed lower and lower into the vat, but their mouths were wide open.

Bitter is Better?
I disagree. There is a common misconception among 'gourmands' that if you take the sugar out of something it will taste better. I suppose the idea is similar to that of dark chocolate versus milk chocolate. WRONG. Bitterness is acceptable in small quantities, when there is an actual flavor present. Unless the food is catering to a burn victim with no taste buds, the bitterness ruins the food by drowning out other flavors, thereby losing its complexity. I had some olive oil the other day from a fairly prestigious local farm which may as well have come from uncured olives.
Please, please, please don't tell yourself that you like dark chocolate to feel better about yourself. A lot of it tastes like dirt. Actually, burnt dirt. And this is coming from someone who loves dark chocolate. If you like milk chocolate, stick with it. Long's cashiers are in no position to judge you, anyway.