alpharaposa | Candy

Yesterday, for Valentine's, I took the day off work and we all went to Colonial Williamsburg to watch them make chocolate the old-fashioned way. In the morning, they roasted the beans. Around noon, they were pounding roasted, shelled beans into pieces and starting to grind them on a heated stone. By the time we left in the afternoon, they had several completed batches and were finishing another. They talked about how chocolate was used as a drink (like tea or coffee, not like hot cocoa). How drinking chocolate was used medicinally for people with sore throats and breathing problems.

Then, I come in to work today, and there is candy on my desk.

I appreciate the thought behind the gifts, but it doesn't appeal to me, anymore. I stopped eating so much sugar, and now the thought of those sugar and starch hearts doesn't appeal at all. The big chocolate heart? I read the ingredients and it was a litany of byproducts and oils. No cocoa butter, just some cocoa. Even the label only said "chocolate flavored".

I can't tell you how sad that made me.

Tomorrow is Monster Day! In the past, I would have eaten V-Day chocolate, but now all I want are veggies and some good dip made with Greek yogurt. I'm officially weird.