Love is in the air... if you love garlic, that is! "Black Power" Garlic Chocolates, marketed by a Japanese garlic company just in time for Valentine's Day, use only the finest black fermented garlic for a truly scent-sual romantic experience.

Aomori province in northern Japan is known for it's tasty apples and fragrant garlic. Apples are a perennially popular snack. Garlic, not so much. This troubles Takko Shoji, a local company who has made it their mission to raise garlic's profile.

It would be easy to do what so many other Japanese companies and regional authorities have done to boost their local specialties - make ice cream. Instead, Takko Shoji's original solution plays on garlic's traditional attributes of aroma... and amore!

Garlic Ice Cream - perfect after a stake, er, steak dinner

Well, OK, garlic doesn't have much to do with love (unless you love Italian or Vietnamese cuisine) but that didn't stop Takko Shoji. In an effort to find something, anything, that would complement fermented black garlic's distinct (or dis-stinked) sweet & sour, prune-like taste, they hit upon bittersweet chocolate.

The next step was noting that Valentine's Day, when millions of Japanese women present their special guys with the gift of chocolate, was almost here. I don't have to tell you what happened next...



You guessed it, "Black Power" Garlic Chocolates are now on sale, just in time for Valentine's Day or perhaps to celebrate another Obama primary win. At 600 yen (about $5) for a box of three - yes, a mere three - the lucky recipients should be suitably impressed. You really don't want to be snacking on garlic chocolates for weeks anyway, so three is the perfect number.