Ahhhh….Chocolate!

And then one day god decided to create chocolate. He really must have been happy with mankind!

Let me tell you something very fundamental to my being – in case you haven’t guessed it already (and you have to be kinda slow not to have!) – I am extremely fond of chocolates. And that’s putting it rather mildly. I can survive on chocolates. Gloom or stress, exhaustion or frustration – chocolate therapy works best on me.

So yesterday I thought I would do something perfect on a prefect fall day. Which turned out to be driving down some 160 miles south of NYC to a little town in the heart of Pennsylvania that goes by the name of ‘Hershey’. Yes yes you got it right – it’s home to the Hershey chocolate company, and therefore rightly enjoys the title of the ‘chocolate-land’ of U. S. of A.

The sun-kissed trees with their beautiful orange and red leaves that hail the descent of fall provided the perfect scenery on our way to the quaint little town that is plush with rolling fields for the cows to graze (remember chocolate needs milk?!) and where everything evoked the sense of being enfolded in chocolates. The roads had cute little names like ‘Cocoa Avenue’ and ‘Dairy Street’ and the street lights over little bridges were in the shape of chocolate blobs. It was perfect.

The Hershey Company offered a tour called (any guesses?) – Chocolate tour – that took you through the entire process of the creation of chocolate right from the point of harvest of cocoa beans to where the chocolates are wrapped and packaged and sent across the world. Watching the rich liquid chocolate being swirled and twisted, then flow through and drop lusciously from one container to another, all the while being enveloped by that luxurious aroma of chocolates, was close to an other-worldly experience for a chocolate-lover like me. When I got out of the place I felt like I had been to heaven and back. Truly.

It’s good to have something in the world that makes you happy with no exceptions – I don’t have to be in the right mood, or say the right things, or do the right stuff to enjoy a bit of chocolate. Eating it is complete in itself. So go on...indulge... :-)