crunchy bits

A few days ago, we had a family outing to the Parkade Cinemas in Manchester to see Avatar. Luke and I had gone to the Buckland Hills IMAX 3-D to watch this movie in all it’s cinematographic glory. All the other IMAX movies we’ve seen have been at museums with a true IMAX screen — the big, 5 story screen that covers your entire field of vision. The dinky screen at Buckland left us underwhelmed to say the least.

Dante wanted to see it on the big screen, therefore so did Lucia, so we found the plain ole 2-D non-IMAX version playing at the Parkade Cinemas. I went along to cover Lulu’s eyes or give a cuddle during some of the more intense scenes. The kids loved the flora and fauna of Pandora, and are now distraught that they will never fly their own “bird dinosaurs” as the characters do in the film.

We  like this theater because the prices are reasonable ($6.75 adults, $4.75 children, seniors, and any show before 4pm every day), and since it’s a second-run theater we get a chance to catch things we missed.

We’ve seen a number of movies there, but haven’t had a chance to check out a small shop nearby that I’d read about online. This time, we arrived with a half hour to spare, so I drove on into the Stop n Shop plaza parking lot on West Middle Turnpike and cruised the strip mall til I found my target. We all piled out of the car and into a treat for the tastebuds — Divine Treasures chocolates. All of their chocolates are made right in the store, using no corn syrup, refined sugars, or trans-fats, while they do use organic Belgian chocolate and offer dairy-free and gluten-free treats.

They have a case of sugar free chocolates that are made with whey, but since we’re avoiding dairy, we turned our gaze to the larger cases of vegan chocolates. We oohed and aahed over the huge selection, and learned that they sell ice cream too. Vegan ice cream. Made with cashews and almonds!  It’s rare to find a place that we can get ice cream out and about, so we split a sundae, opting for the chocolate instead of cherry ice cream, and had hot fudge and caramel sauce on top. We also ordered a few pieces of chocolate — Dante picked one that looked like a gift package that was filled with pomegranate jelly. Lucia went for a sea shell shape that was filled with chocolate ganache. I opted for the toffee bits embedded in a bar of chocolate, and Luke picked the Health Bar, which I think is supposed to be a healthier version of a heath bar and seemed like my choice with some finely shredded chocolate on top. I also got a Thai chocolate but can’t recall what it has in it — perhaps coconut, perhaps chilies, I forget and we haven’t eaten it yet.

So next time you’re in Manchester, indulge yourself! Head to the strip mall for some organic chocolate, and then head to Parkade for that movie you missed last month!

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 20th, 2010 at 2:34 am and is filed under entertainment, local, vegan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.