Because it’s still the Easter season, and because I love chocolate, and because I appreciate readers like you, I have a little something to give away:
A dainty box of homemade truffles from Glarus Chocolatier
Glarus didn’t ask me to do this; I just thought it would be a fun and celebratory idea, and what could be a better first giveaway here at SlowMama than locally made chocolate?
The Glarus shop is located just down the road from me. It exists because one day a boy named Ben saw a girl named Jennifer on an internet dating site and noticed that she liked chocolate. He was from a long line of Swiss chocolate makers, so he thought he better contact her. The rest is history.
Glarus is the name of Ben’s father’s hometown in Switzerland. Ben and Jennifer wanted to bring back traditional Swiss chocolate-making techniques without the use of auxiliary machinery, and they use original family recipes dating back to 1957. They focus on small-batch, handmade chocolates made from the finest ingredients, without high-fructose corn syrup, preservatives, or anything artificial.
If that isn’t Slow chocolate, I don’t know what is.
There are four truffles in the box:
- Almond Truffle: Flavorful, dark chocolate center with natural almond oil covered in Swiss milk chocolate and roasted almonds
- Marc de Champagne: Distinct, champagne-based center accented by strong, Swiss dark chocolate and rolled in confectioner’s sugar
- Lavender Truffle: Dark chocolate center infused with natural lavender essence, rolled in sugar crystals dyed with natural beet coloring
- Rigi Spitz: Whipped chocolate ganache and Kirsch brandy dipped in dark chocolate and topped with a white chocolate snow peak
To win these delectable balls of yum, just leave a comment telling me something about your love affair with chocolate… your favorite kind, your happiest memory of eating too much, whatever. If you hate chocolate and still want to enter for someone else, that’s fine — I’m just really sorry that you have that flaw.
I’ll choose a winner at random and announce it here on Friday afternoon. Deadline for comments is Friday at noon (EST). One entry per person, please — or, if you follow me on Twitter and/or Facebook, you can leave an extra comment for each telling me so, and increase your chances to win! If you’re shy about leaving a comment — and for some reason, many of my readers here are shy — make up a name. Just don’t use “Kitty,” or I’ll think you’re one of my sisters. (Actually, anyone can win unless you’re a writer for this site, or one of our spouses. Otherwise, it’s fair game.)
Also, because this is a perishable food item, I can only ship to addresses within North America. But if you’re reading from overseas, feel free to share something fun about chocolate with all of us anyway.
Hello, I'm Zoe Saint-Paul. I'm a writer, life coach, and new mama to twins who's trying to live "slower" in a speed-obsessed world. Here we chat about life and love, food and design, and everything in between -- all at the right pace. So grab some tea, pull up a chair, and join the conversation. Feel free to 
Oh, chocolate memories — how can I choose just one? I will say that I have given the Glarus truffles as gifts before, and some of the recipients have told me they were the best they’d ever tasted. You want to win this one, people!
As an example of how this works: I also follow you on Facebook!
…and I follow you on Twitter!
None of this matters, of course, as I’m not eligible to win (boo), but for everyone else: Be sure to follow SlowMama in both places (if you don’t already), then come back here and mention it to increase your odds! Good luck…
While I do get a craving for chocolate once a month, it’s one that can be satisfied easily with a lowly Cadbury’s Fruit & Nut. So Glarus would be wasted on my plebeian palate. However, I would like to enter on behalf of a sweet young thing – we’ll call her “Noemi” – who needs regular fixes of top quality chocolate like the desert needs the rain. I like to think that her favorite chocolate memory is my Easter gift of a Leonidas assortment of fresh dark chocolates, flown in weekly from Brussels to NYC, since that gift followed a 40-day Lenten fast from any and all kinds of chocolate; but I can’t be sure of that. Anyhow, I can guarantee that she would be a most worthy and appreciative recipient of this prize.
I love dark chocolate and can be a bit of a snob about it except for my absolute weakness reeses peanut butter cups, esp. the ones at christmas and easter… better chocolate to peanut butter ratios.
I agree with Mags — Glarus chocolate is the best I have ever had, and I lived in Switzerland for a year! How ironic that an imported Swiss chocolate-making technique produces better chocolate than most current Swiss chocolatiers! I’m guessing that the big Swiss brands are using modern methods to mass produce their chocolate, to the detriment of their product.
I love the story of the birth of Glarus. And my heart nearly stopped when I tried their ginger-chocolate truffle! I’m being serious here — it was so wonderfully and surprisingly delicious, I felt the need to express my elation somehow. Since I don’t know how to do soft-shoe, I think I just flailed my arms around a bit and made enthusiastic, incoherent noises while I chewed. My family was faintly alarmed.
I work for a nuclear physicist who often drops hints that he’d like homemade fudge, cookies or some other treat. I often make it for him- ours is a all-natural, recognizable ingredient Czech recipe that takes hours, and it’s definitely worth it. He uses it as a bribe to get other people to get work done: e.g.,
“Would you like a piece of fudge?”
“Why, yes!”
“No. Not until you give me that report on [topic du jour].”
It’d be nice to win something that I can enjoy just for me, instead of having a bit of what the physicists and engineers requested!
Following you on facebook!
oooooh, chocolate. Yum. I have a chocolate and cinnamon scented candle in my bedroom that is the yummiest smelling thing ever. I use small squares of dark chocolate (usually Dove) as a mental toner before practicing the piano or organ – it really does sharpen my mind, and always results in a better practice session. I recommend it to my piano students. It’s funny to watch their faces as they go from laughing at my “joke” to realizing that I really mean it!
My favorite chocolate memory…my husband putting Nutella on his lips trying to tease a kiss out of me. Silly man.
My affair with chocolate has gone beyond pleasure to utility… and utility not just in the sense of merely helpful, but really sort of necessary to get me through certain days and certain tasks. I considered mentioning dark chocolate in my dissertation acknowledgments, for example, and it is sheer folly for me to attempt to travel any long distance without it. Chocolate and coffee… I think they really do qualify as actual graces in my life!
As a Type 1 Diabetic, chocolate’s one of those things that I love the smell of, but very rarely eat. Still, I have many fond Easter memories based in chocolate.
As a child, Easter morning meant beautiful See’s Candy chocolate eggs. My uncle would get each of us a special See’s Candy Easter egg, which we’d find at our place at the breakfast table. So that the diabetic would not be left out, my uncle always included something special in my Easter egg, maybe a gift certificate to my favourite store or sometimes an “I-O-U” to be exchanged for a CD of my choosing. My uncle and I “shared” my Easter egg each year – I’d find the hidden present in the package and he’d eat it for me. This year, my uncle sent my brand-new, adopted toddler a See’s Easter egg. (Needless to say, I did quite a bit of crying when I opened the box…)
I’d like to enter for my uncle, who delights in finding new and delicious chocolate.
And… I’m a Facebook follower.
Yum! Around Easter time, I’m reminded that my favorite Easter chocolate is those Cadbury mini eggs. Don’t give me too many!
There is a chocolate factory in a town nearby (Boehm’s) and they make such wonderful chocolate, I’d love to try Glarus and see how it compares. Truffles are always my favorite.
I also follow you on facebook!
Elizabeth’s uncle sent our new baby boy a See’s egg, too…he sends one to every new addition in the family. It’s such a lovely tradition! Plus, unlike Elizabeth, I have only the arguments of temperance and mortification to prevent me from instantly devouring any new chocolate that is foolish enough to venture through our door…and thus, it might take superhuman virtue on my part to send him the chocolate if I win. I’m willing to find out.
Oh, yes, and I also follow you on facebook. And I really don’t follow that many!
Ok, I have followed you from (almost?) the beginning, way back on the other blog. YOu know me, I know you. I follow you on Twitter and will on fb (never occurred to me and now it’s easter so I’m back on fb)….and what can I say? I’m a Slow living wannabe, or a sporadically slow, gal and what goes better w/ espresso thank chocolate??? My mind goes blank. Nothing. “nuff said.
love the new blog. But of course.
And I used to live and love Balto!
Mmm… chocolate. On a rough day at school (which – even though I love my job – happens often) there is nothing like a little chocolate fix to help get me through the day. Fortunately, my colleagues have the same weakness, and there’s usually some around. My dear friend Kate introduced me to a dark chocolate bar (I can’t remember the brand…) with cherries in it (which I thought I’d hate), and the combination of sweet and tart was heavenly! (And to agree with one of the posts above, there is something about those lovely Cadbury [and only Cadbury] mini-eggs that always hits the spot!)
Love the new blog, and look forward to the posts each day!
Not sure if the chocolate would be appreciated properly by me, but I do enjoy the blog, and maybe the chocolates would convince me that some are worth eating a lot of.
Since I’m already drooling over the description of these truffles, I thought I’d have to comment and enter! I think my favorite chocolate memory is either the first time I successfully mastered my mother’s chocolate chip cookie recipe as a preteen or the occasion on which I bought 10 lbs of lavender and white M&Ms (filled by me from a big machine into 20 individual half pound bags) and then lugging them back home, 4 hours away. (Wedding decorations . . . for my reception tables . . . ah, the things we do.)
I love what you are doing here Zoe! I’ll be heading over to FB to follow you asap.
As for a chocolate story…hmmm. In college I discovered ‘good’ chocolate. Chocolate beyond hershey kisses chocolate (not that there is anything wrong with that!). I have never been the same.
Hi! So, I like chocolate. . . and I will use this as an opportunity to say hi! I started following your blog through the yahoo groups. I am with your agency (about 10th on the wait list for an infant boy)
Thanks for encouraging me to to introduce myself!
Dana
Fools rush in…then there’s procrastination. Somewhere in the middle are those with chocolate.
At one point in my life, I gave up chocolate for one year, as a sacrifice for a special intention. The most difficult challenge during that year was during a tour of a bourbon distillery in Lexington, Kentucky, where they had complimentary bourbon-filled chocolates sitting out. I still wonder what they taste like!
(I follow you on Facebook, too!)
Sorry, separate comment for the following on Facebook…
I really enjoy your blog, and I love chocolate. It’s like magic, isn’t it? I’ve never found a better cure-all. Fortunately my husband caught on to the trick, too.
I am never short on words, yet I’m a bit stumped to describe my love affair with chocolate. Other than to say that it is second only to my love affair with my husband. I have to say that, right?
And I follow you on Facebook!
I LOVE chocolate. I just recently found coffee a cocoa, to REALLY jazz up my morning. I am one of those people who go beyond ‘craving’ – pregnant or not, if I go a day without chocolate, my husband better be stopping on the way home
When I was a young teen, my mother and I often had occasion to travel to a mall in Salem, OR. Hidden inside that mall was a chocolatier shop which, among other things, sold ice cream bars dipped in their own dark chocolate.
Those chocolate ice cream bars were my first inkling into what the attraction to drugs might be. The rush I got off the first bite of that still-slightly-warm dark chocolate lit up every endorphin receptor in my brain. I’d close my eyes and sway slightly, feeling as though I were momentarily levitating. I have always felt strongly about chocolate, but that — that was the tops.
You can send it to me when I win, ’cause I live in N. America. Oh, and I love chocolate. Any kind. Just ask my kids. Yep – chocolate. If the gods had known about chocolate, they would have tossed that Ambrosia right off Mt. Olympus.