What a neat idea! A chocolate festival just before Easter is a great marketing tool, and vendors turned out in droves with chocolate of every kind. It was a wild, windy, rainy and even flooding day, but McCoy's Conference Center in Ripley was packed. What else was there to do anyway? No one could cut grass, work in gardens, go fishing, play ball or golf or any of the myriad of other springtime weekend activities. Might as well eat chocolate, right?
Thank goodness we'd eaten a big breakfast at the Downtowner before heading to the festival, or we might have been in serious diet trouble. The first thing I saw when we went in was this booth:
Oh my. Chocolate in every color and shape imaginable. Carrots, hatching eggs, rubber duckies, you name it. I am not sure I could eat a chocolate cross, though--there is something that seems sacrilegious to me about that.
The place was packed:
I'm sure the vendors were happy about the crowd, and everyone seemed to having a good time. We heard some chocolate songs,
saw some royalty
and even the mayor got into the act.
These were the biggest hit with our family:
If you're thinking these look like dog....well, you're right! These are peanut butter filling, shaped to look like you-know-what and covered with chocolate. The Humane Society was selling them and they were going fast. My daughter-in-law bought several to give to her Sunday School boys, and you know they'll love 'em! I actually bought one for Larry too; he gave it back to me to give to the guys at work--who have yet to taste it. Chickens.
This was one of the most surprising booths--tables filled with inedible chocolate and other foods. It all looked so ready I had to touch it to be sure it was fake, er, faux. This, according to Abby, is the ultimate diet chocolate.
Chocolate-dipped potato chips, anyone? These were being sold by the Jackson County Anti-Drug Coalition but after tasting them, I'm pretty sure these salty-sweet treats could be addictive themselves.
The facepainter at the festival was amazing, turning out an array of faces that were works of art. These young people posed for a photo with their mother's permission:
There was much, much more. My camera battery decided to die about this time, and we were chocolated out anyway, so we went home with our bags of treats and a sweet taste in our mouths from this fun festival.
There's a Chocolate Lovers Festival in Fairfax, Virginia every year. My friend and I went once, about ten years ago, but somehow never got around to doing it again. Odd, since we're both chocoholics. On the other hand, it was very, very crowded, with little to no place to sit down anywhere.
ReplyDeleteThis year, I see from their site, they even had a storyteller ... "Children of all ages can join storyteller Gary Lloyd for classics retold with a chocolate twist." That would have been fun to go to ... :)
--Mario
Hey, I know Gary! He's a great guy, very funny. Isn't this a small world? This one had nowhere to sit down inside either although you could sit out in the lobby of the conference center. I'd think some tables and chairs, someone serving sundaes, hot chocolate, maybe chocolate wine would be neat.
ReplyDeleteI didn't go, I knew I couldn't trust myself around all that chocolate. Carolyn is something else.
ReplyDeleteI hear you, Janet! I'm glad I was already full when we arrived.
ReplyDeleteAnd the mayor! She's such a hoot. She was having a great time.