Chocolate... THE TOUR

Today Elissa (co-worker) and I went to the Lake Champlain Chocolate Factory, and took the "tour". I say "tour" since it was pretty much a let's-look-through-the-observation-window-while-I-talk-about-chocolate tour. The entrance to the factory is really the gift shop. There are rows and rows of products ranging from the dark and white chocolate turkey centerpiece to the milk chocolate-rasberry filled truffles. I will get to that in a minute. First... the "tour" begins. A young guy told us to go up to the observation deck and he would join us in a few minutes. True to his word, he did. He explained where chocolate comes from (and all this time I thought it was from chocolate fairies!) and showed us the cocoa pod from whence cocoa beans come from. Then there is this crazy fragmented stuff that comes out of the cocoa bean (our guide didn't seem to know himself what it is called.) Then, cocoa butter and cocoa maize are formed. Did you know that white chocolate has only cocoa and no maize? Anyhoo, there were workers adding chocolate faces to snowman molds and a worker who has the task of leveling off the pre-truffle truffles (I forget the name our guide called these things.) The chocolate is not made at this factory, ony melted and formed. The chocolate arrives from Belgium in little chips of white, dark and milk chocolate. Then it is melted down and formed. There is lots of manual labor to the process including powdering, decorating and stuffing the chocolate (stuffing the kind that has fillings is done by hand, mostly here.) The packaging room was off limits to our view. However, our guide did offer us a bunch of peanutbutter w/milk chocolate truffles and dark chocolate with cherry filling truffles. Both were really tasty, and that's coming from a girl who doesn't like cherry flavored things. It was a lovely experience. I think I might go back to buy some Xmas presents....

On top of that, Elissa and I found we have several interests in common. This might make for a delightful adventure buddy.