Belgian Chocolate--Not!

 

For my birthday, an acquaintance gave me a birthday card and included inside was a strip of little chocolate candies. I like dark chocolate, and these Godiva minibars are 72% cacoa.

I had not seen Godiva candies in strips like these before. She said she bought them at Dollar Tree. I could not find them at my Dollar Tree, but I saw online that I could buy a package of them from Kroger. They turned out to be smaller than her gift, the squares about half the size of hers inside each foil-wrapped unit. 

I noticed the package said crafted in the Belgian tradition. If not made in Belgium, what was the source of this candy? Turkey!

My internet search showed that Godiva which started in Brussels, Belgium, in 1926 was bought out by a company in Turkey in 2007. The little gold foil wrappers on my candy say Godiva Belgium1926. It is unclear from my search whether some of the product line is still made in Belgium. It is apparently made in other countries and sold in many countries, but now owned by this Turkish company. The candy is delicious, but it did make me pause a bit to think about it being made in Turkey. 

Fort Wayne Cookie Cottage

 When I went to Joann's Fabrics and Crafts, I would see the Cookie Cottage across the road running along the parking lot. I never went inside, then it disappeared. I heard it had moved, but I didn't try to find out where. 

Today I had my one-year follow-up to my hiatal hernia surgery so I knew we would be in Fort Wayne. We get an insert inside the Fort Wayne Journal that has coupons for Cookie Cottage. I looked up the address. Not too far from Hobby Lobby where my husband was interested in going. He changed his mind, but we went to the shop anyway. 

The coupon was buy one dozen cookies, get 3 cookies free. The parking lot was crowded. When I stepped inside there was a fairly long line. That gave me plenty of time to peruse the selection of cookies. I found out that each cookie is wrapped in a tissue before going into the bag or box. No wonder it takes so long for the line to move. 

I chose 6 chocolate chip pecan, 4 snickerdoodles, 2 oatmeal raisin, and 3 iced sugar cookies. As I unpacked the box tonight after dinner, there were 16 cookies. That may have been a mistake, but I wonder if the lady included an extra cookie to welcome me as a new customer. I told her I was a newbie. 

They are expensive cookies, but I wanted to try them at least once. If I had a special occasion, I might buy some again. Tonight I had the oatmeal raisin, nice moist buttery cookie.

We ate lunch at a nice restaurant, then went to Best Buy to look at televisions. I remember when high definition came out how impressed we were. On these ultra high def TVs, you feel like the football is coming out of the screen right into your face. Such rich colors on the OLED and QLED sets. Other than size, we really don't know what we want. We went to Costco and talked to a sales rep there. These televisions are smart TVs so we will have a learning curve. I feel like I have a better idea of what to look for, but we did not buy anything today. 

We finally received today some communication from Grace Village about the loss of television service over the weekend. When we arrived home this afternoon, we got an email saying the service has been restored, but all we get is broken pixilated pictures and popping noises so you cannot understand anything being said. We let them know our television service is still not of a quality that can be viewed. They are going to look into it some more. I guess they had already been discussing changing to a different company. The initial message we received made it sound like we might not have TV service for weeks. That may still turn out to be the case.  

Records

 Friday we set a new record for February 9th: 61 degrees. It has cooled down today (40's) and will be cooler next week as well. The warmth is part of El Nino.

The goldfinches are starting to turn yellow already. The grass is becoming green. 

This afternoon is Grace Village Day at the Grace College basketball games. They are providing van transportation for those not driving themselves. There will be refreshments in the alumni suite. 

The Grace College Men's basketball team is undefeated this season. 23-0. You can read about their winning in this article from the local newspaper. We have watched previous games on the Grace Village TV station (streamed from the internet), but this will be our first live game this season. Go Lancers!

Speaking of TV, ours has no signal since Friday evening. A cable has been cut so none of the condo residents have programming. Bad timing since it happened just before the weekend and possibly we will not be able to watch the Super Bowl on Sunday. We are not die-hard fans of Kansas City nor San Francisco, but it would be nice to watch the game. There has been no communication from Grace Village about the situation other than what we were told when we called around 5 p.m. Friday. Disappointing.