Spooner House made a serious effort to replenish its community food pantry this weekend by indulging the Valley’s sweet tooth.
“This is great, amazing,” said Debbie Grisgraber, chairperson of the Spooner House Board of Directors, Sunday afternoon as hundreds of chocolate lovers of all ages converged on the “In Love and Chocolate” fundraiser for Spooner House and the Mary A. Schmecker Turtle Shell Fund.
The event was held at the Courtyard by Marriott hotel in Shelton.
Grisgraber predicted the event would raise several thousands of dollars for each of the organizations.
Organizers were also happy that the Blizzard of 2013 missed them by a week.
“We’re very thankful it was this weekend and not last weekend,” said Spooner House Executive Director Susan Agamy.
Some 20 or so food vendors presented the crowd with chocolate dishes of all kinds.
“Everybody talks about Chocolate Pizza,” said Michele Van Wart of Shelton as she greeted Paul and Wendy Hahn, who opened the confectionery of that name in Shelton last October.
Van Wart, who was accompanied by her husband, Rick, said she hears about the store everywhere she goes.
She was happy to come to the benefit, because she and her husband always support Spooner House, and because it gave her an opportunity to sample some chocolate.
“There is nothing better,” she said.
The Hahns said Chocolate Pizza is a company started by Paul Hahn’s family, which makes their specialty chocolate treats at a headquarters near Syracuse, NY.
The signature item is a chocolate disk, either milk, dark or light chocolate, decorated with toppings like a pizza, except the toppings might be nuts, M&Ms or a white chocolate drizzle.
Laura D’Auria and Courtney Winger, employees of the Royal Bakery from Huntington Center, were serving chocolate mousse cake.
D’Auria said it came in two kinds — good and really good.
Everyone likes chocolate, D‘Auria said. “It’s that satisfying flavor. I don’t know how to put it.”
“You can’t turn down chocolate,” Winger said.
Spooner House, a multi-town charitable organization, runs an emergency homeless shelter in Shelton and a food bank with several locations to benefit less fortunate residents in the lower Naugatuck Valley.
The Turtle Shell Fund — named for Shelton resident Mary A. Schmecker, a local art teacher who passed away in 2008 — is a nonprofit that provides funding for creative arts programs for children at the Lower Naugatuck Valley Boys and Girls Club and other venues.
On June 8, the Turtle Shell Fund will hold Soupstock IV, its 4th annual soup cookoff competition event at the downtown River Walk in Shelton.
Although the blizzard missed affecting this weekend’s fundraiser, Spooner House representatives said the massive storm didn’t leave the poor untouched in the Valley.
Spooner House’s community food pantry provides donated food for hundreds of needy families in the Valley, and many of them saw the service disrupted by the blizzard. The storm brought donations to a halt for much of the week, and beneficiaries were unable to get to the pantry locations to pick up their food allocations.
The storm also cancelled school for most or all of the week. That kept children home for lunch, instead of getting free or subsidized meals at school, which increased the need to get food from the community pantry programs.
Besides the chocolate lover’s benefit, Spooner House volunteers on Saturday held special food collection drives at Stop & Shop supermarkets in Shelton, Ansonia and Seymour, aided by students from St. Joseph, Shelton and Seymour high schools.
Spooner House board member Felicity Medinger, who headed the volunteers at the Stop & Shop in Ansonia, said many people only heard about it when Agamy appeared on Channel 3 TV Saturday morning, but they made a point of coming to the store to buy food items specially for the community food bank.
Agamy noted people in the Valley typically help out when they hear there is a community need.
“They really take care of each other,” she said.
Shelton resident Kim Bensen, who runs a local weight-loss center, offered sample treats at “In Love and Chocolate” on Sunday that showed that chocolate need not be fattening. Her treats were chocolate-covered Fiber One breakfast cereal mixed with PB2 peanut butter paste. Amazingly, each bite-size treat only had 10 to 15 calories, she said.
Bensen recently moved her business to the old Crabtree car dealership building at 405 Bridgeport Ave.
More in line with the waistline-compromising nature of the event were the cakes, cake pops and decorated treats offered by Crazee Cakes, a home business owned by Judy Robinson of Oxford and Stephanie Trcka of Ansonia.
Robinson said they opened the business about three years ago after taking a confectionery decorating class.
“Who doesn’t love chocolate?” asked Trcka.
