Adventures & Hot Fudge Sauces
Hello and good day!
My wife wanted some time alone to work in the garden.
My three sons were bursting with erratic energy, yelling, dancing wildly, arguing, fighting, tumbling, complaining, and generally engaging in every type of behavior that nature has conceived of to work on a mother’s last nerve.
I told the boys that I was taking them for a walk around the lake, and this elicited a collective groan.
“Aw man! A walk around the lake again?” they whined.
“You boys don’t understand. This is going to be an adventure walk,” I said.
“An adventure walk? What’s that?” asked the oldest, assuming the role of ringleader.
“We aren’t going to take the regular path. We are going to take a hidden path that you boys don’t know about,” I said.
The boys looked at each other, smiled, and nodded.
I’ve learned a secret about kids that my children don’t know I know.
And the most beautiful part is that they don’t even know it about themselves yet.
Children love novelty.
Anything new is enticing.
I must make an admission here, before proceeding, and I hope that you won’t judge me too harshly for it.
There was no hidden path.
I invented it on the spot to drum up enthusiasm.
My fabrication worked, and I could see the idea of an unknown hidden path working its way through their psyches, exiting their brains, and circulating throughout the rest of their bodies causing observable physiological changes in them.
First, their faces lit up.
Then their neck muscles tightened, and thick veins began to show as the idea worked its way into their bloodstreams, coursing down through neck veins that disappeared vertically behind their collar bones.
Their chests swelled and their arms began to flap up and down.
Their feet skittered as they began to run in place.
Now they high fived, jumped in circles, and began to chant.
“Hidden path! Hidden path! Hidden path!”
Their arms flailed in the air, waving back and forth over their heads.
The idea had taken complete control over them.
I have a fun little trick I play during these moments.
I like to ask a question, the answer to which is already obvious.
“So does that mean you want to go?” I asked.
Their bursting physicality paused momentarily, and they looked at me with great confusion.
I chuckled to myself because the confusion on their faces is precisely what makes this type of question so much fun.
Now the bewilderment turned to very serious concern.
The oldest boy stepped forward and answered me with extreme gravity.
He grabbed my arm and looked me in the eyes.
His brow was wrinkled, and he talked slowly.
“Of course, poppy. Can’t you see how excited we are?” he said.
The others nodded seriously behind him.
“I’m sorry. That was a silly question. Yes, I can see that you are excited. Are you ready to go?” I asked.
“Do I need to put on my rubber boots?” asked the littlest one.
He is a little blue-eyed, light-haired angel, and when he asks a serious question the pitch of his voice goes up at the end.
In this case, the word “boots” was overly emphasized.
I couldn’t help walking over and holding his skinny face between my two hands.
I wanted to lift him and hold him in my arms and kiss his cheeks and forehead a million times right then and there, but it would have caused an unacceptable delay in the adventure’s commencement.
“Yes, you will need rubber boots,” I said.
The three of them took off into the house, and this gave me the time that I needed to concoct a plan that would live up to the excitement that I had now generated.
They came out and we proceeded down our driveway and onto the quiet road that runs in front of our house.
The road dead ends at a forest a quarter mile to the left and we headed in that direction.
We had a beautiful Spring day on our hands, cool and sunny.
It had rained many days in a row and the air was fresh and smelled of rain.
The black road was damp and the irrigation canals that run alongside the road were filled with running rainwater.
The boys stopped on the way and crouched down to put leaves and twigs in the water.
They watched as the current of the small stream carried the foliage away.
Because they had on their rubber boots, I didn’t prohibit stomping in puddles, and they stomped their way through every single puddle they could find.
What is it about kids and puddles?
We made it to the forest, and to be honest, I still wasn’t sure where I might find a real, live, hidden path that would take us somewhere.
The boys were none the wiser.
They tromped along, sure in the knowledge that their father would take them somewhere worth going to.
I caught a lucky break just then because I ran into my neighbor John who owns the last house on the frontier before you venture into the trees.
John has a funny habit.
He begins the answer to every question with, “Why, hell yes.”
There is a long path that runs down the left side of John’s house.
He keeps his garbage cans out there and beyond the garbage cans, the path heads downhill, through his backyard, then winds through an acre of wooded area, and eventually arrives at a pier that he built that stretches out into the lake.
The boys were up ahead, and I stopped to chat with John, who was in his front yard with a weed whacker.He turned off the machine and lifted up the protective goggles that he was wearing.
“Howdy John,” I said.
“Howdy Adam. What are you up to?” he asked.
“I’m taking the kids on an adventure.”
“Where are you going?”
“I was thinking we might cut through the forest and down to your pier. Do you mind if I walk through your acre and out onto the boat launch?” I asked.
“Why hell yes you can. I don’t mind at all,” he said.
“Thank you, John. Do you still have a lot of yard work to do?” I asked.
“Why hell yes, I do. I’m just getting started.”
The boys were growing impatient and called out to me.
“Poppy! Come on!”
I said goodbye to John, and we headed into the forest.
The point of this story, which I will continue with tomorrow, is that anybody can manufacture an adventure and adventures are a very fun part of life.
Speaking of adventures, I’d like to tell you about a new company to whom we are wholesaling chocolate.
There are less than 5 companies in the United States that are permitted to use our chocolate in their products.
In 2020, when we exited our wholesale business to focus on e-commerce and retailing, we ceased selling to hundreds of restaurants and chocolatiers all over the world.
Since then, we have re-established relationships with a few of our preexisting long-time wholesale customers and a single new wholesale customer.
The name of this new company is Heavens To Betsy Hot Fudge Sauce.
They are headquartered in our little town of Issaquah, WA and they make the most delicious hot fudge sauces using our chocolate.
I’ve had the pleasure of watching husband and wife Betsy and Michael Sperry try over and over and over to create a hot fudge recipe that is delicious, shelf-stable, and that can be shipped right to your doorstep.
Above, I prefaced telling you about this company by saying, “Speaking of adventures”.
These wonderful people have been working on their fudge sauces for two whole years. It has been an adventure of trial and error, which all entrepreneurial adventures are.
But it was worth it.
Because there is no other product like theirs on the market.
I don’t get a sales commission for telling you about this.
We are wholesaling our chocolate to these folks at a reduced price which doesn’t really behoove us. But we believe that their hot fudge sauces deserve to exist in this world, and we want to support them.
I promise you that they have knocked it all the way out of the park with their products.
To take a look at the Heavens To Betsy Hot Fudge Sauce product line up, please visit here, Home - Heavens to Betsy.
And finally, I hope that you will find yourself in the middle of an adventure sometime soon.
Thank you so much for your time today.
I hope that you have a truly blessed day.
Adam
Click here for wonderful chocolate made with pure Nacional cacao.