Woodstock - Organic Dark Chocolate Almonds - Dec. 3, 2025

Chocolate of the Day

Woodstock
Organic Dark Chocolate Almonds
Good + - Good ++
Weight: 3.25 oz. (92 g.) / 6.5 oz. (184 g.) in total package
Calories: 450 calories in 1/2 package (3 servings)
Cost: $9.49 for 1 package
Purchased from: Vitacost, online order 

Welcome to Day #10 of Chocolate, Movies & Entertainment Theme Week.

Today's Organic Dark Chocolate Almonds were from Woodstock (Edison, NJ), and distributed by UNFI (Providence, RI).* The Edison location caught my eye. (See below for an explanation.)

Aroma and flavor notes for these glossy, jumbo-sized dark almonds included: a generous coating of glazed, smooth, chocolate-y, dark chocolate with faint, slightly roasted cacao and dark berry and earth notes. And at the center of each piece was an authentic, crunchy, whole roasted almond.

I appreciated the more flavorful dark chocolate and the company's long-time commitment to the use of organic and Non-GMO ingredients.

Thank you Thomas Edison...

I "paired" today's almonds with 3 historic short films from the 1890s that had roots near Woodstock Foods in Edison Township, NJ--an area where famous inventor Thomas Edison's Menlo Park "idea factory" was located--where light bulbs, phonographs and a motion picture camera took shape.

Thomas Edison later open a laboratory complex (and the Black Maria film production studio) further north in West Orange, NJ--where very short moving pictures were developed that included: "Blacksmith(ing) Scene" (1893), "Washing the Baby" (1893), and "Fred Ott's Sneeze" (1894). The last one was over in a matter of seconds. Hardly enough time to tuck into a bucket of popcorn or take even a sip of an iced cherry cola.

Chocolate pre-dated even the earliest of films,** but modern chocolate/snacks were still toddlers in the 1890s.

The very first film venues likely lacked dedicated concession stands. As films became longer, viewers might have brought dried fruits or nuts or their own candies. Hershey's chocolate bars were in their infancy in the 1890s. (They were being developed for sale in Pennsylvania.)

Chocolate almonds were being made in Virginia** as early as in the 1700s (often following European recipes), but modern concession stand chocolates like Goobers (1925) and Raisinets (1927) didn't appear until more than thirty years after the three early Black Maria short films debuted.

Happily movies and snacks of all kinds are firmly intertwined in the 21st Century...to the horror of movie viewers who cringe at the sounds of chewing and slurping next to them inside a theater.

I wonder what Thomas Edison would have thought about nachos and gummy worms? I guess we'll never know.

Ingredients: Organic Dark Chocolate (Organic Cane Sugar, Organic Unsweetened Chocolate, Organic Cocoa Butter, Organic Soy Lecithin [An Emulsifier]), Organic Roasted Almonds, Confectioner's Glaze, Organic Maltodextrin, Organic Sugar. 

Allergen-related information: "Contains Tree Nut (Almond), Soy. Manufactured in a plant that processes peanuts, tree nuts, soy, wheat, sesame, eggs and milk products." 

*Woodstock is owned by United Natural Foods, Inc. (UNFI) based in Providence, Rhode Island. The company sources organic and Non-GMO ingredients from farms in 25 countries. Today's organic dark chocolate almonds were produced in the U.S. with domestic and imported ingredients.

** There are records of Virginians making chocolate in Colonial Williamsburg in the U.S. in the 1700s, primarily grinding cacao beans to make a hot chocolate beverage, often spiced. George Washington and his wife Martha, John Adams and Thomas Jefferson are all said to have enjoyed drinking hot chocolate.