Margo and the Chocolate Bar

     There’s nothing like a ten-pound bar of chocolate to get your attention!  Whether or not you credit chocolate with healthful benefits (an anticancer agent, a brain stimulator,  a cough preventer, a diarrhea antidote – even an aphrodisiac, according to some), the mere size, fragrance, and heft of such a candy bar seems at once incredibly tempting and vaguely obscene.
     The ten-pound chocolate bar that our friends, Margo and Bill, brought us last Friday was made by Guittard Chocolate Company of Burlingame, California.  Begun in San Francisco by Etienne Guittard, a French immigrant, the company has been in business since 1868.   It is a point of pride for them that, of the original family-owned businesses that brought commerce and culture to the streets of early San Francisco, Guittard Chocolate Company is the only one that remains family-owned.
     It wasn’t the first time that Margo and Bill have brought a gigantic Guittard chocolate bar to a House Concert as their potluck contribution!  The last was four or five years ago, and I would like to report that we still have a pound or two lurking around…  (Well, I’m sure the pounds are around – no doubt in the form of inches added to my waistline!)  But, in fact, I have very little memory of what really happened to all that chocolate.  I’m sure it was eaten.  I can only hope we shared it!
     Restaurateur Tony Kischner laughed right out loud when he saw the chocolate bar at the dessert end of the potluck table.  “Who brought that?” he wanted to know.  “Ann goes through one of those every few days in her baking!”  And judging by the desserts I’ve sampled at their Bridgewater Bistro in Astoria, maybe more than that!
     We have found that the best implement for getting the chocolate into bite sized chunks is an ice pick.  Even so, it’s not an easy task.  I do hope that our hosts at any events in the foreseeable future appreciate chunks of chocolate (in addition to our signature hostess gift of farm fresh eggs) because that ten pound bar is demanding that we share the bounty.  The sooner, the better!