Mmm, chocolate!

Now that school is back in full force, with one full day of teaching completed, and four months remaining until Christmas Break, I'm finding that I'm craving chocolate more.  Hehe.  It's no secret how much I looooooove chocolate and peanut butter combinations.  In fact, on Tuesday night, at something like 7pm, I spontaneously decided to whip up, from scratch, a delicious chocolate peanut butter dessert.  So what if I indulged in a small slice of it this morning for breakfast.  I'm currently drinking a juice made out of beets, carrots, apples, lemon, and ginger if that helps to be more healthy.  :)  Haha!

So, thinking about chocolate, I'm reminded of the chocolate we served during our wedding weekend.  On our way down to York from my parents' home we swung by Wolfgang Chocolates that is located a few blocks away from my old office.  If you ever find yourself near the factory, take advantage of it!  They offer tours that take you through the factory (complete with hairnets and all!) AND my favorite part...the shop has terrific products for sale at awesome prices.  You can even buy the "rejects" at half off or even deeper discounts and they taste just as good as their better looking companions.  So, in an effort to share some of the local flavor with our family who had come from all over to help us celebrate, we wanted to serve up some local chocolate as dessert at our rehearsal dinner.  We also included this informational handout that I took from Wolfgang's website in the wedding survival kit bags we gave out as gifts after dinner.

 

It was so exciting running in here just one hour before our rehearsal was to start across town!  This was our first stop in York before we headed over to south York to pick up the flowers for the reception then connected with our families at Heritage Hills before leaving for the church where we would meet up with Monika, Ashley, and of course, Fr. Jack!

We picked up sugar-free chocolate for the diabetics in our family (but they were just as good as the "real" thing), chocolate covered pretzels, graham cracker and shortbread type cookies with chocolate on them, my personal favorite, the peanut butter petals (YUMMMMMY!), and even yogurt covered Fruit Loops thinking the kids might get a kick out of those (that were surprisingly good!!).  We got all of these assorted chocolates for a little over $20 from the gift shop.  Incredible!!

The chocolate seemed to be a hit for child and adult alike!  I also enjoy seeing both adults and children looting through their survival kit bags in the background of these pictures.  Hopefully they enjoyed their little gifts from us!

Within the survival kit bags, we also included a hometown chocolate treat from Schuylkill County for each family.  Costas, based out of Pottsville, produces delicious club sandwiches. No, they're not the bread and lunch meat type club sandwiches but are something WAY better.  Basically a description of the club sandwich is to take a saltine cracker, spread peanut butter on it, then dunk it in chocolate.  It doesn't sound like anything extraordinary but it's oh so good!  So, we had local chocolate from York where we were celebrating and also from my hometown area to serve our families the night before the wedding.  We inserted the handout you see above that came from the Costas website in the survival kit bags as well.  Something really interesting I learned while reading up on the history was that in 1966, Costas Candy Company became a subsidiary of York Barbell Company, Inc. in good ol' York, PA, focusing on the manufacturing of Energy Bars, Fiber bars, and Low Carb bars for private label companies. Costas-York Candy Company continued to produce the Costas Club Sandwich bars that sold throughout Schuylkill County.  This explains why I always referred to the company as Costas York but I had never realized it was due to the town and thought it was the last name of the owners!  It's so neat to think that a treat I so enjoyed as a child was tied to the town I would end up teaching in for seven years that was 90 minutes south of where I grew up...go figure!

We also served the club sandwiches to our wedding guests at the reception the next day.  For our seating placards we printed out the names and table numbers on labels that we placed on top of individually wrapped Club Sandwiches along with a bowl of York Peppermint Patties and gold wrapped chocolate coins and this sign.

I wish I had a photo of the Club Sandwiches from our reception but I don't!  Here is what a Club Sandwich looks like and you can order them online by clicking here!  They have a variety of different flavors but I like the original (shown below) the best!

Or just come visit me in Schuylkill County the next time I'm home and I'll take you to the store in Pottsville located on Bacon Street.  Yes, Bacon Street.  ; )