salon du chocolat

Chocolate Sculpture

I know I'm late in posting this, but Sunday we went to a little chocolate festival. It was in Saint-Genis, the town where we lived the first month we were here. It was held in their cultural center in a large reception hall, type place. I'm glad that we went, but it was a little disappointing. First off you had to pay 3.50€ each to get in and then you pretty much had to pay to do or buy anything inside! Yeah, there were some free samples of chocolate at different booths, but mainly they were there trying to sell you chocolate, or books on chocolate, or bags with chocolate sayings, you get the picture. There were a couple of booths with wine tasting but, yet again, you had to pay for it! We did break down and pay the 2€ for the chocolate fondue and the woman there was super nice and gave us extra pieces of fruit - we were only supposed to get 4 and she gave us 6! It was yummy. They had fountains of dark and white chocolate to sample. mmm....mmmm....good
so the fondue was yummy and we enjoyed it immensely. you know, at one point one idea I had for our wedding reception was to have a chocolate fountain at every table or, since that would be massively expensive, a pot of chocolate fondue and fruits and sweets as the centerpiece for every table. That would have been awesome, but have you ever looked into the cost of fresh fruit for 120 people in September? it's not pretty. but, enough of that more of the salon du chocolat (which literally means room of chocolate! yum you can't beat that). One of my favorite things at the salon du chocolat was the chocolate finger-painting. Granted it was supposed to be reserved for kids 6 and under but when no one was around you know I totally dipped my fingers into the melted chocolate and painted a little smiley face picture. Who could resist? I thought it was great and some day I'll have a chocolate theme party and everyone can finger-paint with melted chocolate. I think that would be awesome!
So, that's about all for the chocolate festival. A good experience, but not too much to do if you weren't' ready to shell out money for pricey chocolate and chocolate related items. Oh, there were these very cool sculptures made entirely of chocolate throughout the room. And there was a fabulous band playing,. The trumpeter/director was a hoot, making faces and having a good ol' time. So were the kids who spent their time running around and dancing to the music - it was pretty darned cute. They are especially cute when they talk. They're little high-pitched voices saying, "Maman, "and then something totally intelligible to me. Tres adorable! So, in parting I leave you with a close up of one of the chocolate sculptures these things were damned amazing. Who knew you could sculpt chocolate like that?! Fantastique.not the best picture, but the base of this statue was cool - there's a little cherub peaking out.