Chocoholics would adore cocoa beans for creating chocolate if they didn't also sprout magical beanstalks that house giants who steal chocolate from humans. Eat your way through mixed feelings with today's Groupon: for $22, you get a Chocolate 101 class with a 16-piece box of chocolates at Xoxolat in Vancouver (a $45 value). A schedule of class times is available here.
Modelled after sweets from classic European chocolatiers, Xoxolat's award-winning chocolate makers concoct an assortment of bars, truffles, and artisanal chocolate creations. During Chocolate 101 sessions, instructors imbue pupils with chocolate-related factoids, such as how to distinguish different bean flavour profiles and how Mayans built non-melting chocolate sundials. As they discover the steps require for each bean's transformation into chocolate bars, students can sample cocoa of varied origins and percentages culled from numerous manufacturers before tasting Xoxolat's blended bars, such as dark chocolate brimming with sea salt and triple peppercorn. In addition to a 10 per cent discount on any shop purchases made directly after class, guests receive a 16-piece box of chocolate truffles to savour at home, share with friends, or taunt lactose intolerance enemies.
Groupon Says
The Groupon Guide to Everyman’s Classics: Animal Farm
Everyman should enjoy classic literature, which is why the Groupon Guide invented the Everyman's Classics study-guide series. This installment covers:
Animal Farm: Chapter V
Summary: All right, so at this point the animals have been running Animal Farm for a while. This one horse, Mollie, gets treats and pets and ribbons from a neighbour farmer who is a man (not an animal), so she leaves to work on his farm instead of Animal Farm.
Meanwhile, the rest of the hilarious talking animals are arguing about whether they should build a windmill like Snowball the pig says or to not do that like Napoleon the pig says (note: Napoleon is also the name of an important man from France). So they argue and stuff and the animals seem like they want the windmill. But then Napoleon calls in all these dogs he’s been secretly raising and they come in and are big and scary and the animals are scared even though I’m pretty sure a horse could beat a dog in fights. The dogs chase away Snowball and Napoleon is like, “Basically, I’m in charge now and communism is flawed.”
The pigs explain to the animals that it is good that Napoleon is in charge and not bad and also Snowball was a bad pig. The horse named Boxer who always says “I will work harder” also starts saying “Napoleon is always right.” The animals continue to work because that is how they get food and the dogs are scary (even though, seriously, horses are strong [also donkeys can kick pretty hard]).
Analysis: Having recently discovered that there is no symbolism in this book, scholars agree that this chapter is particularly unsymbolic. It is well documented that walking, talking animals fall under Jungian archetypes of “the priceless” and “the adorable.” Scholars also agree that they are more excited for the later chapters when the pigs wear top hats and other human clothes.
Important Quote: “Nine enormous dogs wearing brass-studded collars came bounding into the barn. The animals cowered in fear and did not have an all-out, no-limits brawl with the dogs even though this would have been awesome and worthy of being put on a video website if such a thing ever exists.”
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