I'm writing this from the living room of my dad's house. It's Christmas morning, but I'm the only one awake. We do most of our celebrating on Christmas Eve, so there's a big garbage bag full of wrapping present to my left and a pile of presents to my right. The only thing we save for Christmas are the stockings, and, without peaking, I know mine will be full of "Christmas balls" and other sweet treats from the best candymaker in the world: Sarris.

Sarris has always and will always be my favorite chocolate. Not that I'm an authority or anything, but I do have quite the sweet tooth. I would bring bars of Sarris back from Pittsburgh to share them with my Boston friends. This came to be known as "Pittsburgh chocolate" and also came to be expected. Not a problem! Disseminating amazing chocolate throughout the country is definitely a task I'm up for.

Allie and I took a drive out to the Sarris factory and store to stock up on some goodies before Christmas. It's a little overwhelming walking in there and becoming surrounded by chocolate, but we survived!



In the corner of the store is a wall of framed photos with the Sarris founders/owners with various celebs and important folk. Right there you'll see good ol' George W. But below...

Pittsburgh's classiest kicker in the history of life: Mr. Jeffrey Reed.
(And Jaromir Jagr! Circa-awesome curly mullet!)




There's a castle made of chocolate. I always forget that this exists, so it's always a pleasant surprise when I see it and think "OMG A CHOCOLATE CASTLE!"


There's also an old-fashioned ice cream parlor attached to the store. Allie and I split a sundae, but it was so big that we couldn't finish it. (It's not often that I leave ice cream on the table, but Sarris definitely had me beat.)

Pretty soon, my brother will wake up (sometime in the neighborhood of 2 p.m.) and we'll dig into those stockings. My supply of Pittsburgh chocolate will be replenished. And all will be right in the world.