Forget About The Flowers, Bring on the Chocolates
Copyright 2006 Heaven Ministries

I don’t care too much about the history of Valentines Day, or about who the little man called cupid with the arrow is. What I do care about though, is getting some tasty chocolates. I absolutely love chocolate and when I was younger, I got away with eating it. Now that I am in a more mature stage in my life, it makes me fat and cranky.

Chocolate is not very good for you. But the good news is, cocoa is VERY good for you, and if you didn’t already know it that is where chocolate comes from.  Pure cocoa powder is filled with calcium and potassium, which are two valuable vitamins and minerals our body needs.  When someone says, chocolate is good for you, they actually mean to say, cocoa is good for you. Did you know that cocoa even has antioxidants that ward off cancer and makes new cells? 

Do you know how many pieces of chocolate candy you would have to eat to get the vitamins you get from just one tablespoon of cocoa?  An awful lot of chocolate pieces, that’s for sure. Does all this stop me from eating chocolate candies and candy bars? No way!  Unfortunately, I must admit, I do have to limit how much chocolate I eat because it messes with my blood sugar in a not so good way, which makes me irritable.

A good substitute for chocolate is carob. Most health food stores carry carob powder and carob chips for baking.  Be sure to read the labels though. Some carob products have sugar in them, which takes away from the health benefits.  Carob powder is bitter like cocoa powder so you have to sweeten it with sugar or honey, but you can sweeten both cocoa and carob powders with date sugar, which is unprocessed sugar right from the cane.

Yep, I love chocolate. My son asked me once which I liked getting better for Valentines Day, my box of chocolates or dozen roses, and I told him the truth; of course I like the chocolates.  Alas, I do have to hide my box of chocolates from other chocolate lovers in the house or they’ll get eaten up in a flash. Also, they don’t last as long as the flowers, and they don’t look as nice either, but tell that to my taste buds. My husband stopped buying me flowers for Valentines Day.

My favorite chocolates without going too deep into the pocket book are the Whitman’s Sampler. The reason is simple. Each and every chocolate is good. There is not one Whitman’s Sampler chocolate that I don’t like. That’s saying a lot for a box of chocolates. All the other boxes of chocolates at comparable prices have lower quality chocolates.

If it’s not Whitman’s Sampler, here’s what happens, you bite into a chocolate that looks good on the outside, but on the inside it’s not even chocolate! It’s orange flavored candy or cherry crème. Before I figured out which brands were the best, which took a lot of chocolate eating, I would have boxes of chocolates with almost every candy half bitten into just sitting in its prospective brown wrapper waiting for my husband to do what he is good at, eating the leftovers. I liked the flowers better back then.  

Have a blessed day with your loved ones, and don’t eat too much chocolate now.