Chocolate emergency!

These are treats I got from my mom in the mail a few weeks back... yes, there's a story. My friend K had invited me to a "fete du chocolat", an annual chocolate party at her Italian friend's house. Everybody brings a savory dish containing chocolate, plus a bar or two of solid chocolate. The bars get chopped and plated, the wrappers are hidden, and after lunch we pass the plates and write down our impressions of each. This year there were 22 samples! I brought 3 of those, which I had never tried before, but they looked interesting: Hot Indian Chai Masala, Japanese Green Tea with Jasmine, and Moroccan Green Tea with Curry. Anyway, back to the picture above. I went back and forth for two weeks over which dish to bring.
Chocolate pasta? But what would I serve with it? And it would get cold on the way there. And I wanted to make it myself, but I don't think I could get it done Saturday morning in time to be at the party by 12.
Mole? No... there will probably be several moles there. (There was one.) And that takes a long time to make too, although there are some jarred versions at Mexican stores.
Hmmm... what about hagelslag? It's not really a lunch dish, but I could sort of morph it into an appetizer, maybe. In Holland people eat it for an afternoon snack, and when we were growing up it was breakfast food. But this is a possibility.
Hem...haw...hem...haw...

Suddenly it's the week of the party and I'm still up in the air (are you surprised?)! "Mom... help!" :-) So she ran down to Mar-Val, Ripon's unofficial Dutch store (it's a regular grocery store... with half an aisle dedicated to Dutch food. Unusual, no?) and put some hagelslag in the mail for me. What I didn't know was that she had also included one of my favorite magazines!

I love getting mail...

P.S. Oh yeah, I forgot to tell you about the chocolate tasting. Well... as the plates were being passed, there was clearly an un-favorite. It was quickly named the "fish chocolate". In the end, I was awarded "Most liked chocolate" and "Most disliked chocolate"... the fish chocolate! Can you guess which one that was?