The $10 Trader Joes Buy I’m Getting Everyone for Christmas

Every single year, despite my best efforts to plan ahead, I wind up with a lot of last-minute gifts to buy. As hard as this is to admit, when absolute desperation strikes there’s one last resort: the grocery store. (Please make me feel better and say that you’ve been there too.)

While perusing my local Trader Joe’s for some fun holiday finds, I found one grocery store gift that is, dare I say, actually kind of cool and might just save my butt in a pinch: the chocolate passport.

“What is the Chocolate Passport,” you ask? It’s a perfectly packaged box of eight single-origin dark chocolate bars, each with beans grown and produced in a different country. And those, in ROYGBIV order, are as follows: Tanzania, Sao Tomé and Principe, Papa New Guinea, Dominican Republic, Ghana, Venezuela, Ecuador, and Peru.

Each bar is wrapped in a different brightly color paper, printed with tasting notes and fun graphics indicating the origin of the beans. Just like a passport tells your personal travel story, this set of chocolate bars tell a story of their own—one that any chocolate (or travel) fan will appreciate. And the bars vary in chocolatey intensity, too. They range from 60 to 73% cacao. The higher the percentage, the stronger (read: more bitter) the chocolate. At just $10 each, I can get a semi-sweet present (pun intended) for everyone on my list.

It’s not every day that you find a fairly thoughtful gift in the checkout line of the grocery store that doesn’t look like you tossed it into your cart out of desperation! I personally think that a chocolate passport would make a great gift for teachers, coaches, bosses, book club friends, neighbors, and any other miscellaneous person on your list that you’re thinking of this holiday season. It’s a trip!

This post originally ran on Kitchn. See it there: The $10 Trader Joes Buy I’m Getting Everyone for Christmas