{"id":24723,"date":"2015-02-12T09:51:58","date_gmt":"2015-02-12T14:51:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=24723"},"modified":"2015-02-12T09:51:56","modified_gmt":"2015-02-12T14:51:56","slug":"on-your-table-treats-for-the-sweet-on-valentines-day","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/?p=24723","title":{"rendered":"On Your Table: Treats for the sweet on Valentine’s Day"},"content":{"rendered":"

A celebration of love \u2014 and candy on Feb. 14<\/strong><\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

By Cathy Branciaroli<\/strong>,<\/span>\u00a0Food Correspondent, The Times<\/em><\/span><\/span><\/p>\n

\"ValentineCandy\"<\/a>

The tradition of giving sweets to those you are ‘sweet’ on goes back to the mid-1800s in England.<\/p><\/div>\n

I\u2019ll bet you don\u2019t know why Valentine\u2019s Day is celebrated on February 14th<\/sup>.\u00a0 Turns out to have nothing to do with romance.\u00a0 Or candy for that matter, although according to The<\/em> Huffington Post<\/em>, people spend more than $1 billion on Valentine\u2019s candy each year.<\/p>\n

No, the origins go back to ancient Roman times when an early Christian priest named Valentine defied the Emperor Claudius in illegally performing marriages for soldiers despite a government decree that only single men were fit to serve in Claudius\u2019s armies.\u00a0 Once his crime was discovered, he was condemned to die as a traitor. Before he was executed on February 14th,<\/sup>, Valentine wrote notes of encouragement from his prison cell to his family and friends signed “from your Valentine.”<\/p>\n

Candy came into the picture later.\u00a0 By the mid-1800\u2019s, the idea of Valentine\u2019s Day as a celebration of romance had captured the fancy of Victorians who began showering their loved ones with gifts on the day.\u00a0 In response to the demand, a British candy company called Cadbury started selling beautifully decorated heart-shaped boxes of chocolate for Valentine\u2019s Day.<\/p>\n

So thank you to Saint Valentine and Mister Cadbury for standing on the side of love.<\/p>\n

Today, aiding and abetting in this cause are local candy makers such as Sue Ford, owner of the family operated Candy for all Occasions.\u00a0 Recently relocated to the Jennersville Shopping Center in West Grove from her original Chester County location at the junction of Route 896 and State Road, Sue has been hand-crafting chocolate truffles and other candies for twenty-five years.\u00a0 She told me that \u201cchocolate makes people happy\u201d and so her labor of love is to spread that happiness around.\u00a0 Helping her out in this enterprise are her children who also work in the store.<\/p>\n

Sue taught herself to make chocolates and they are all done by hand.\u00a0 The centers are composed of heavy cream and dark chocolate which are rolled and hand dipped with any number of swirling toppings.\u00a0 Of course if your sweetheart would like nostalgic candies like Necco Wafers or Mallow Cups, Sue has these too, along with jelly beans, hard candies, fresh roasted nuts and hard to find confections.\u00a0 Right now she is also offering chocolate-dipped strawberries that would make your mouth water.<\/p>\n

If your goal is make this Valentine\u2019s Day special, then Sue will make up a customized basket with personal messages engraved on its ribbons.\u00a0 Better hurry though, She said that she and her staff are working around the clock in order to meet the holiday demand.<\/p>\n

I can tell you from my personal taste test that it would be well worth calling to place an order, which can be delivered for the big day.\u00a0 Or if your special occasion is a wedding, anniversary or family event, she can create gifts fit for those occasions as well, hence \u201cCandy for All Occasions.\u201d<\/p>\n

Candy for All Occasions is located at 854 West Baltimore Pike in West Grove.\u00a0 The store is open from 10M to 9PM Monday through Sunday.\u00a0 Their phone is 610\/869-3839 and their website Is WWW.candyforalloccasions.com<\/a>.\u00a0 For those living in New Castle County, Delaware, her other store Is located in the Fairfax Shopping Center at 2215 Concord Pike, with the phone 302\/654-9171.<\/p>\n

Cathy Branciaroli also writes about her adventures in the kitchen on her blog <\/i>Delaware Girl Eats<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A celebration of love \u2014 and candy on Feb. 14 By Cathy Branciaroli,\u00a0Food Correspondent, The Times I\u2019ll bet you don\u2019t know why Valentine\u2019s Day is celebrated on February 14th.\u00a0 Turns out to have nothing to do with romance.\u00a0 Or candy for that matter, although according to The Huffington Post, people spend more than $1 billion […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":24722,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[245,7],"tags":[6215,2641,913],"class_list":["post-24723","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-lifestyle","category-featured","tag-candy","tag-chocolate","tag-valentines-day"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24723","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=24723"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24723\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":24724,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24723\/revisions\/24724"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/24722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=24723"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=24723"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.unionvilletimes.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=24723"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}