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Trader Joe’s Granny Smith apple rings Tremont 647 momos

Legend has it that Spain’s Queen Isabella thought chocolate strange when it was first presented by Columbus to her royal court. But how she loved Valencia oranges! Less-favorable food items, including the odd brown substance from the Americas, were said to improve their standing in the court only when paired with Isabella’s oranges.

Today, of course, most Americans tend to do just the opposite: we use chocolate to make fruit more appealing. Either way, dipping a tart sliver of orange rind into bittersweet chocolate (never milk chocolate — or worse, white!) improves both products: the dark, sinful confection is ennobled by the presence of something healthier; the virginal fruit is made vastly sexier. Chocolate-dipped strawberries don’t have the same play of sweet and bitter, and pineapple chunks — well, that’s just egregious. To treat yourself like true royalty, it’s orange or nothing.

Available for 25 cents per slice at the Chocolate Dipper, 200 State Street, Boston, (617) 439-0190 and 199 Boylston Street, Chestnut Hill, (617) 969-7252; and for $6 per 10-slice bag at L.A. Burdick Chocolates, 52 Brattle Street, Harvard Square, Cambridge, (617) 491-4340.

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Trader Joe’s Granny Smith apple rings Tremont 647 momos

With the holidays past and three months of cold and dark to look forward to, these days we’ll take warmth and cheer anywhere we can find ’em. Usually a good bottle of single-malt Scotch is all that’s needed to impart both. But solitary drinking is frowned upon, so the folks at Watch City Brewing, in Waltham, have orchestrated a night of camaraderie, food, music, literature, and, yes, whisky and ale with their Robert " Rabbie " Burns Dinner at the Newtonville Times restaurant.

Burns (1759–1796), of course, is the national poet of Scotland, and he’s virtually synonymous with all things Scottish, not least the whisky. His birthday, celebrated with abandon from Edinburgh to Edmonton, has become a favorite of intellectual bon vivants the world ’round as an annual excuse to tie one on under the guise of literary appreciation.

Representatives from Chivas and Glenlivet will be on hand to offer whisky tastings and to chat about these most peaty and potent of potables. Several area brewers (including Harpoon, Rock Bottom, and John Harvard’s) will be there with their Scottish ales. Dishes like poached salmon, neeps and tatties (that’s squash and potatoes), and the indispensible haggis (that’s sheep guts) will be laid steaming before you. Bagpipes and drums will be available to " pipe in the haggis. " And local literary luminaries will read Burns’s dialectical verse.

" It was just an idea we had, " says Watch City’s head brewer, Aaron Mateychuck. " I was cruising the Internet and saw all these dinners people would have at social clubs and homes to celebrate this guy’s birthday. I figured it would be a great way to drum up a little business. I called some area brewers to see what their reaction would be, and they were all into it. " That’s good for us; it’s better still for Boston’s Home for Little Wanderers, which benefits from the evening’s $30 cover charge.

Besides helping charity, the evening, says Mateychuck, offers an ideal way for people to meet and talk with the experts about the finer points of distilling and brewing. He’s especially pleased with Watch City’s own contributions. Its Rabbie Burns Quinte-sensual Smoked Rye is made with rye malt, which gives it the grain’s characteristic spicy tang. And Mateychuck describes the Skye High Scottish Strong Ale, with its Isle of Skye peat malt and eight percent alcohol, as a " very cold, fermented, malty-style ale " with " peaty, smoky, woody " notes. We’re sure Rabbie himself would be glad to raise a glass of either.

Watch City’s Robert " Rabbie " Burns Dinner takes place at the Newtonville Times, 344 Walnut Street, in Newton, on January 24, at 6 p.m. Call (781) 647-4000.