In 2006, Corinne DeBra was your average chocolate fan when her daughter challenged her: "I bet you can't eat a different chocolate each day for a year.” Now it's 2010 and she has yet to miss a day in her chocolate quest. Corinne has eaten more than 1300 chocolate bars in more than 1300 days. She maintains a spreadsheet of the varieties she finds to ensure that she never eats the same chocolate bar twice. She was kind enough to take time out her her chocolate project and discuss her experiences with us.

You travel a lot and you've tried chocolate from many places and countries. Any favorites, any patterns?
It seems that every chocolatier that makes finer, higher end chocolate went to Europe at some point or came from Europe. The Swiss and Germans have a rich history of craft and technique that lead to a very nice, smooth texture and taste. In Belgium as well. The French have their own sort of advantages. I always find it nice to see when people take these basic techniques and put creative spins on them.

What's your favorite city in the US for chocolate?
I didn't think of this when I started here, but San Francisco turned out to be an extremely convenient location for my undertaking. There are many small chocolate shops here, a lot of their founders came from the tech business, and they've formed a great community. Also, New York, and Chicago with Vosges. But really there hasn't been a city where I didn't find someone doing something interesting with chocolate.

Were you ever close to missing a day?
I've definitely been filled with panic a couple of times, where I ate the chocolate ten minutes before midnight. Since then, I always try to travel with a chocolate stash, which leads to funny situations like pulling out a chocolate bag at a business dinner in Japan because my partners wanted to know what the chocolate of the day was. But in the end it always turns out unnecessary - I always find something fun in chocolate wherever I travel.

How long do you think will you be doing this?
I used to say I'll do it until I run out of chocolate- but you just blew that goal with 27 billion different combinations at chocri! Maybe until I've eaten my weight in chocolate, we'll see.

Thank you for talking to us Corinne!

While we’re pretty passionate about chocolate, sometimes we meet someone whose dedication to the topic seriously impresses even the chocolate fanatics at chocri.

Recently, I spoke with Corinne DeBra- Corinne made an interesting commitment to sample a new chocolate bar each day, and she spoke about some of her more intriguing chocolate experiences. Below is the first half, where Corinne talks about how the challenge came about, some of the more interesting chocolate finds she’s seen, and blogging her love for chocolate.

In 2006, Corinne DeBra was your average chocolate fan when her daughter challenged her: "I bet you can't eat a different chocolate each day for a year.” Now it's 2010 and she has yet to miss a day in her chocolate quest. Corinne has eaten more than 1300 chocolate bars in more than 1300 days. She maintains a spreadsheet of the varieties she finds to ensure that she never eats the same chocolate bar twice. She was kind enough to take time out her her chocolate project and discuss her experiences with us.

You set out to win the bet, which you’ve done successfully. What compelled you to actually attempt this challenge- and why have you kept going, even after you’ve won?

I wanted to see if I could commit to anything for that many days. There were days when I was frustrated with the administrative aspects and blogging about it, but after you get to a certain point, you just keep going and hunting new chocolates.

Then I realized that I wasn't going to run out of chocolate, so I wanted to prove to myself I could keep at it. In a sense it is a dedication to fun my in life, to something creative. If I can do this for 1000 days, what else am I capable of... you know?

You list your best and worst experiences per year on your blog, but throughout the project, which chocolates were your most (and least) favorites? (Ed: Corinne hasn't tried chocri yet!)

For my least favorite, I'll have to go with insects covered in chocolate. Although people tell me I should’ve tried ants- maybe I just didn't have the right kind of insect?

As for a favorite, that's so hard. Perhaps a recent experience when I traveled to Alaska. I did research ahead of time and found this Salmon and Anchovy Truffle. You couldn't get that anywhere else. I like going to remote areas and trying out what they make with their native ingredients, small businesses trying out something creative."

Did you ever pass on a chocolate?

[sigh] People find out what I'm doing and they start buying me things. Often it's a chocolate that I’ve already tried. I don't actually eat excessive amounts of chocolate- maybe an ounce a day, even if that's more than most people. I'm not interested in eating all the chocolate, especially if it looks like bad chocolate, or if it doesn't contain a lot of real chocolate.

Can you taste a difference between regular and fair trade, organic and/or single origin chocolate?

Single origin can be very distinctive in some cases, with a flavor arch like wine- with a beginning, middle and end. Fair trade and organic is more difficult. There is a correlation to a certain type of taste, sometimes related to texture, but it's unpredictable. Often fair trade and organic chocolate are more artisanal, and that affects the texture.

Tune in next week for part two, where Corinne gives us the scoop on chocolate from different regions, perseverance, and her future chocolate plans!

We have perfected customized chocolate bars. We're getting really good at having tastings. Now we just have to figure this picture-taking thing out... Nevertheless, I of course want to share how our tasting this past weekend went!

The W Hotel at Times Square was so kind to host us on a (busy) Saturday night. The Living Room Lounge was beautiful. We had our own corner and set up a table not only with delicious chocolate but also with our fresh-off-the-printing-press banner that Build-A-Sign made for us (a separate post on that tomorrow).

While we were setting up, regular guests of the lounge started coming by and checking the chocolate out, and soon a nicely sized crowd both of chocri connoisseurs and newbies was tasting our new recommended creations and meeting Michael. I'm glad everyone got to meet the inventor of design-your-own chocolate bars - as you can see in the picture on the right, he really loves his chocri bars (I know how he feels).

We were able to share some of the new Recommended Creation concepts with you- "Pure Relaxation" was one of the favorites, "Pure Sex" will get a little more of a spicy kick to it, and the "Beautiful Skin" Chocolate Bar (loaded with toppings that are good for your skin) was a huge success as well. More on that later!

For now, thank you all for coming. We love meeting you in person, and we had a great time hanging out with you and eating chocolate. Thank you also for all your advice on creating the perfect recommended creations! More images can be found in our flickr album. Until next time!

UPDATE: The winner of the three chocolate bars from the random drawing was Andy Shaffer. Congrats!

Mothers hold their children's hands for a short while, but their hearts forever. ~Author Unknown
- so here's to my Mom:

I was born when my Mother was just 21. Yes, that was a surprise ;) When she learned that she was pregnant, as shocking as it was, she told my father the "great news" - and they both kept going! They both were students at that time, in an early semester (school is a little longer in Germany), and they engineered their life around, well - me. My Mom took an exam right after I was born, and my parents would rush back home after school so the other one could go back to university. Despite coming from a farm and both my parents not having a lot of money, my Mother never followed the typical advice - ditch the studies and stay by the crib of your kid. The opposite happened- having a child made her more determined to provide for it, and she graduated as one of the best in her year. By the time I went to school, we moved because she had found a job in a tech company. A manager who is now the COO of that now huge tech company soon saw that she was intelligent and hard-working, and decided to put her on a cool project because her graduation paper had been about this new invention "the CD-ROM". She is now a representative of all the Executives of that company, but what is much more important to her is that she found many friends at work throughout the years.

I am very proud of my Mom, and she sets an excellent example for a German proverb that suggest you take the stones that life puts in your path to build steps from it. She had a child at a time of her life when most people said it will mean the end of the career, and instead rejoiced about it and used it as a motivation for her career. I'm sure that without her example, I would be in a very different place today. Danke, Mama.

Come to think of it, I also want to give a little shout out to two other Moms in the chocri universe: The Mother of Franz supports chocri immensely with accounting help, and although I never had the pleasure to meet Micha's Mom, I know she's a huge chocri supporter thanks to Facebook - you've probably seen her comments on our wall before. Thanks Founders' Moms!

What do you thank your Mom for today?

p.s. Vote here for your favorite Mother's Day chocri - made by kids for their Moms! Voting ends at Midnight tonight!

p.s. II It's not too late to buy your Mom a gift certificate so she can design her own chocolate bars. ;)