Adventures in the Land Of Lindt

I will be visiting my godparents on Cape Cod this coming weekend. For two nights of hospitality, I felt a nice hostess gift was in order, but wanted it to have a very personal touch, because I was always known as an artsy kid and still feel the need to hand make my gifts to them. 

I painted a wooden photo box (from Michael's), put some nice pictures of me and Chris on it, wrote a thank-you on the inside, and decided to fill it with chocolate truffles. 

On Saturday, I had a wicked bad craving for steak, something I love but suck at making at home. I only know how to grill a steak, and since I can't have a grill at this apartment complex, I have to go out for a decent steak.  I also had a coupon for the 99 Restaurant, a source of steak. 

The 99 Restaurant in West Springfield is on Riverdale Street, a generic commercial strip of big box stores and plazas. In one of those plazas,  halfway between Stop and Shop and Kohl's, is the Lindt chocolate outlet. Since we were on that strip anyhow, we decided to check that out on our way to dinner.  It is incredibly easy to miss, so for my fellow Western MA peeps who would look for it, it's on the side with Hometown Buffet, but go past that heading toward Kohl's. There are Lindt signs in the windows. 

The shop was extremely no-frills. The tiny flourescent-lit shop was mostly cardboard boxes stacked on each other and some were two-deep against the wall. the only fixture was the checkout counter.  Aside of chocolate Easter bunnies and Santa Clauses past code (but perfectly fine, as the signs all over the shop reassured us, since those dates are about stock rotation, not expiration and they would be good for a long time still), the deals didn't seem too spectacular at first. There were loose truffles available by the pound, but not the selection of varieties one would find at a Lindt mall store. We decided to get the 19 ounce assortment bag, which was $15, but $2o for two, so we got two and decided that sometime soon Chris would make himself very popular at his female-dominated workplace. 

We went to checkout and got a very happy and somewhat overwhelming surprise. For spending $20, we got an absurd amount of bonus chocolate. First of all, there was the bundle of three 3.5 ounce big chocolate bars topped with a 1.2 ounce bar. Then, we got to pick three more big 3.5 ounce bars from an assortment that included dark chocolate with orange or mint. Finally, a bag of Ghirardelli white chocolate baking chips. 

Holy shnikes!  What are we going to do with this much chocolate? I still don't know. Easy potluck dessert? Birthday presents for Chris' office lady friends? 

We brought our chocolates into the restaurant with us so they wouldn't melt in the car. We slipped a big bar into the folder with the check and the tip. Our waitress didn't notice that the folder was thicker than usual, and stuck it in her apron. She came back to thank us for making her night, told us she was so thrilled that she screamed and that another waitress tried to steal the candy bar from her. *shrug*  Chicks dig chocolate.