Weekend in Ithaca

Jennie and I spent part of our long weekend camping in Ithaca, just a two hour drive southeast. The weather was beautiful all weekend, we stayed on a pleasant tree shaded site at Buttermilk Falls State Park for two nights. Highlights of our trip were eating lunch at the famed Moosewood Restaurant, hiking 10 miles total in and out of 3 amazing river gorges and drinking cocktails at Felicia's Atomic Lounge. It was graduation weekend so we stayed away from the campus, but we did have the opportunity to do some shopping in the cute downtown area. On the way home on Sunday we stopped at Sheldrake Point winery for a tasting and some tasty gourmet lunch. View all of our Ithaca pictures on Flickr.

Harout and David visit Rochester

My close friend and college roommate Harout was in town, along with his partner David, for graduation weekend. They stayed with us on Linden Street and between graduation events, we showed them around our neighborhood and Rochester. We also had the opportunity to meet the wonderful friends of their family who live in Pittsford. It was so nice to be able to spend time with Harout and to finally meet David. Although we keep in touch, we don't see each other very often. Now it's our turn to visit them in L.A!

Check out our pictures from the weekend.

Pretty Snow

Blog Growth Stunted by Chocolate

Since we started our chocolate company last year, I've had very little time to dedicate to the care and feeding of this blog. I wanted to apologize for that and let you know that this situation is more than likely to continue.

(Photo of us in our kitchen taken by Jen Rynda).

As a small consolation, here is a summary of our latest chocolate achievements:

• We launched our online store in November 2007: www.hedonistchocolates.com.


• We had an amazing Holiday season as the result of our first appearance on TV (view footage), our unique Holiday Truffle Collection (Champagne Pomegranate, Egg Nog, Fig, Ginger Molasses and Orange Clove), new line of Drinking Chocolates, and the support of our friends and family.


• Our Valentine's season was boosted by some outstanding press coverage in Rochester Magazine (pdf) and the Democrat & Chronicle, another TV appearance; an aggressive tasting schedule and two collections that got everybody talking: Valentine's Spice and Raspberry Love


• Our company is becoming more well known in Rochester, resulting in partnerships with some of the most respected businesses in the area such as Wine Sense, Craft Company No. 6, Mann's Jewelers and Arena's Florist.

We're very proud of all that we've been able to accomplish in such a short time. We couldn't have done it without a lot of support from our family, friends and community. We've just finished up with Easter which wasn't a big holiday for us this year and are moving on to Mother's and Father's day as well as thinking about our summer collection.

I'll try to update the blog when I can, but I can't promise to do it with any regularity. The best way to know what is going on with us right now is to check the website www.hedonistchocolates.com and join our company mailing list.

Goodbye Buddy

Chocolate Spread

We're a sponsor this year for ImageOut, Rochester's Lesbian & Gay Film & Video Festival. On Friday, we donated a chocolate spread (pictured above) to the opening reception of the Festival's fine art show: ImageArt. We set the table up and then went to dinner. By the time we returned to the event (half and hour later) almost of the chocolate had disappeared into the hungry mouths of attendees. They loved it!

Chocolate events

We've been very busy with chocolate-related events this fall, hence the lack of blog posts. Here's a picture of our table at Chocolate for Champions, a benefit for Special Olympics that was held at Artisan Works. I've posted more pictures on our Flicker site. We also had a booth at The Women's Alliance conference and the premier local foodie event: Savor Rochester. We're hoping to get our name out now, so that people think of us for their holiday gift giving.
I've been spending most of my time working on our website, configuring it for online sales. Jennie has been making a lot of chocolate and doing weekly events such as the South Wedge Farmer's Market.